Louca-Mai Brady

University of Hertfordshire | UH · Centre for Research in Primary and Community Care

Capturing the views and experiences of children and young people directly and involving them more actively in the research process are increasingly seen as essential for good research, evaluation, and policy and service development. Written by two experienced social researchers and trainers, this book provides a practical and concise introductory...

The case for children and young people’s involvement in health research has been well documented, but less attention has been paid to the experiences and impact of involving children and young people rather than adults. This paper explores these issues in relation to a project undertaken for the James Lind Initiative on the availability, quality an...

Edited by Louca-Mai Brady Foreword by Kath Evans There is increasing interest in young people's participation in the design and delivery of health services. But young people's views are not consistently sought or acknowledged and they are still often marginalised in healthcare encounters. Drawing on original research and a diverse range of practic...

Background Children and young people’s (CYP) involvement is an increasing priority in UK healthcare and in heath research, alongside recognition that involving CYP in research requires different considerations to involving adults. Underpinned by children’s rights and a co-production ethos this paper, co-authored with young evaluators, explores the...

Introduction This exploratory literature review seeks to examine the literature around commissioning processes in the co‐production of health and care services, focusing on two questions: How do health and care commissioning processes facilitate and/or pose barriers to co‐production in service design and delivery? What are the contextual factors th...

Background Public involvement is important to the relevance and impact of health and care research, as well as supporting the democratisation of research. In 2020, the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) reorganized and eliminated INVOLVE, an internationally recognised group that had played a central role in public involvement in the UK s...

Background Workers tasked with specific responsibilities around patient and public involvement (PPI) are now routinely part of the organizational landscape for applied health research in the United Kingdom. Even as the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) has had a pioneering role in developing a robust PPI infrastructure for publ...

Background Public involvement is important to the relevance and impact of health and care research, as well as supporting the democratisation of research. In 2020, the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) reorganized and eliminated INVOLVE, an internationally recognised group that had played a central role in public involvement in the UK s...

Involving children and young people (CYP) in service and research design improves quality and accessibility. Running events in schools to invite CYP to volunteer and explore careers in the NHS may contribute to uptake of training posts and developing the NHS workforce.Here we evaluate two activities with CYP, our Young Person’s Advisory Group for r...

Background Workers tasked with specific responsibilities around patient and public involvement (PPI) are now routinely part of the organisational landscape for applied health research in the UK. Even as the National Institute for Health and Social Care Research (NIHR) has had a pioneering role in developing a robust PPI infrastructure for publicly...

Whilst there is growing awareness of the case for children and young people's participation in health services and health service research, there is limited evidence on how this apparent commitment to children's right to participate translates into practice. The chapter, co-authored with and young people, draws on examples from the authors' origin...

We present reflections on work with a group of young people during a qualitative evidence synthesis about eating disorder related content that can be accessed online. Our aim was to help young peoples’ priorities and concerns be better reflected in the review, so as to better inform the development of policies that affect them. A review team and a...

Background Children and young people’s (CYP) involvement is an increasing priority in healthcare and in heath research, alongside recognition that involving CYP in research requires different considerations to involving adults. Underpinned by children’s rights and a co-production ethos this paper, co-authored with young evaluators, explores the lea...

This toolkit provides the practical side to the accompanying guidance. Based on the researchers' own tools and methods developed in different research contexts, as well as extensive referencing and examples from other available materials, it provides templates and ideas for - recruitment materials - teaching plans - training materials - practical...

Presentation from a workshop which drew on research, professional and lived experience of young people using health services. A researcher and lived experience practitioner used a combination of presentation, group discussion and practical action-planning to create a supportive space for participants to share experiences, ideas and questions and le...

This Guidance and an associated Toolkit were commissioned by Barnardo's to provide researchers, project workers and others with clear guidance and tools to use when supporting children and young people from a diverse range of backgrounds to be young researchers. The Guidance provides an overview of key issues and arguments on issues to think about...

eyeYPAG started in Spring 2019 so, after our first two years, we wanted to evaluate* the eyeYPAG so that we could learn from everyone involved what has been good about the group, what difference we have made and how we can develop and improve in the future. A group of eyeYPAG members (the young evaluators) co-produced the evaluation with the group’...

A rapid literature review on where and how young people seek information and advice on money matters. Possibly contrary to expectations, the internet and social media do not provide the information young people are looking for when it comes to financial matters, and often cause more confuison than enlightenment. Our findings show that young people...

Although volunteering is widespread in the UK, there is limited robust evidence around its effectiveness, especially in supporting vulnerable families. This rapid literature review aimed to explore the available data around processes and outcomes for families. Volunteers were found to support families in a range of roles, e.g. befriending, supporti...

While there is growing awareness of the case for children and young people’s involvement across the public sector, there is limited evidence on how this apparent commitment to involvement and children’s rights translates into professional practice and young people’s experience of involvement in health research. There are also disparities in the cha...

There is increasing recognition of the need to involve the public in health research, but accounts of how best to achieve this are scarce. This article describes public involvement in the TRials Engagement in Children and Adolescents (TRECA) study, which is developing and evaluating multimedia information resources to inform children, young people...

This chapter considers children and young people’s participation in the development of health policy and service delivery. The chapter was written by Louca-Mai, at the time a postgraduate researcher at the University of the West of England, in collaboration with Emily (Barnardo’s Participation Manager) and Felicity1 and draws on our experience of a...

Purpose: Young people's involvement should lead to research, and ultimately services, that better reflect young people's priorities and concerns. Young people with a history of treatment for alcohol and/or drug problems were actively involved in the youth social behaviour and network therapy study. The purpose of this paper is to explore the impact...

The Youth Social Behaviour and Network Therapy (Y-SBNT) study was a National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) funded randomised controlled trial. The study aimed to demonstrate the feasibility of recruiting young people to a family- and wider social network- based intervention [1] by testing an adapted version of an established adult interventi...

O19 Developing resources for a learner-centred approach to learning and development for public involvement in research Lucy Frith1, Bernard Gudgin2, Amander Wellings3 1National Institute for Health Research (NIHR), Research Design Service North West, University of Liverpool, Liverpool, UK; 2Public representative, Thames Valley, UK; 3Public represe...

A report on Generation R, a national Young Person’s Advisory Group identified the need to develop a systematic way to measure the impact of [young people’s] involvement activities. Following previous unsuccessful attempts to address this issue, the James Lind Initiative commissioned this project to investigate the feasibility of measuring young peo...

Whilst there is growing awareness of the case for children and young people’s participation across the public sector, there is limited evidence on how this apparent commitment to participation translates into professional practice and young people’s experience of participation in health services and research. Participation in health tends to be dri...

Background Family interventions appear to be effective at treating young people’s substance misuse. However, implementation of family approaches in UK services is low. This study aimed to demonstrate the feasibility of recruiting young people to an intervention based on an adaptation of adult social behaviour and network therapy. It also sought to...

Background A growing body of research has identified family interventions to be effective in treating young people’s substance use problems. However, despite this evidence, take-up of family-based approaches in the UK has been low. Key factors for this appear to include the resource-intensive nature of most family interventions which challenges imp...

Background: Arguments supporting the involvement of users in research have even more weight when involving the public in systematic reviews of research. We aimed to explore the potential for public involvement in systematic reviews of observational and qualitative studies. Methods: Two consultative workshops were carried out with a group of young...

The ‘Youth Social Behaviour and Network Therapy Study’ (YSBNT) is a 30-month project which is adapting and testing an intervention (way of delivering services) originally developed for adults, so that it can be used with young people using drug and alcohol services and their families and social networks. The study is also looking at how best to inv...

We’re all very aware of including young people in our clinical work – it’s why we’re in child health – but what about making it happen in research? This blog post by Louca-Mai Brady, a researcher working in the field of CYP’s participation in health services and research, and NIHR INVOLVE advisory group member, briefly outlines why this matters and...

The ‘Youth Social Behaviour and Network Therapy Study’ (YSBNT) is a 30 month project, funded by the NIHR Health Technology Assessment programme, which is adapting an intervention (way of delivering services) which was originally developed for adults, so that it can be used with young people using drug and alcohol services and their families. The st...

The case for children’s participation has been well-documented, but it is also a multi-layered and sometimes contested concept. Although children’s participation is becoming more common in the UK in relation to the development and delivery of health services, and in health and social care research, significant issues still remain, including growing...

Louca-Mai Brady is currently using action research to explore participation in health and social care service, as part of her doctoral research. In this seminar she will explore what it means to ‘embed’ children and young people’s participation in health and social care services and discuss some of the issues emerging from her research and a number...

This workshop is organised by invoNET (http://www.invo.org.uk/invonet/) to debate: • what do we mean by the 'evidence base' on nature, extent and impact of public involvement in research? • who are we trying to influence with this evidence? • what are the purposes of the evidence base on public involvement in research? What could and should the evi...

This workshop is organised by invoNET (http://www.invo.org.uk/invonet/) to debate: • what do we mean by the 'evidence base' on nature, extent and impact of public involvement in research? • who are we trying to influence with this evidence? • what are the purposes of the evidence base on public involvement in research? What could and should the evi...

In this chapter the authors discuss the involvement of children and young people in social care within the wider context of children’s participation and rights, and models of child participation. They then outline how a focus on children’s rights has, to some extent, been reflected in increasing interest in children and young people’s involvement i...

Drawing on contributions from user activists and academic researchers, this topical reader provides a critical stock take of the state of user involvement. It considers different contexts in which such involvement is taking place and includes diverse and sometimes conflicting perspectives on the issues involved. This chapter considers the legislat...

This collection draws together experiences and perspectives on user involvement from user activists, academics and practitioners. It includes chapters that focus on autonomous collective action by disabled people, mental health service users and others; action within the health and social care service delivery system to influence services; and user...

While patient and public involvement (PPI) in health and social care research has progressed successfully in the last decade, a range of difficulties with the evidence base exist, including poor understanding of the concept of impact, limited theorization and an absence of quantitative impact measurement. In this paper, we argue that a paradigm cha...

These guidelines have been produced for researchers who are contemplating involving children and young people (CYP) in their research project as participants or in a more active role.

There is a growing recognition of the variation between local authorities in the proportions of children with SEN, the apparent composition of these groups, and the nature and quality of services provided to support them. Local area data collected on children with SEN, particularly the termly School Census and the annual SEN2 return by local author...

Research commissioned by Play England exploring the extent to which young children, from birth to five years old, are involved in physically active play whilst in early childhood provision. Through observation and a literature review the research explores factors in the child’s environment, relationships with others and adult attitudes that affect...

Increased participation and success in education for disabled people will improve their social inclusion and benefit society in general. In this article Louca-Mai Wilson discusses Disability Rights Commission research on education and its implications for policy and practice. Research findings are considered in relation to the need for the voices o...