P2 “We’ve walked the walk”: Lessons from involving young people with experience of substance misuse services in a research study

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 intervention (SBNT) [2]. The study was also a case study in doctoral research by one presenter (L-MB) on how young people’s involvement can be embedded in health services and research [3] This poster draws on this doctoral research and the study report [4] to outline how a group of young advisors who had used drug and alcohol services in the past worked with the research team to make sure that the research was relevant to young people. The young advisors were involved in the design of key research documents and tools, data analysis and interpretation and reporting. But there were some challenges in recruiting and working with this group of young people, and we found that the standard ‘young people’s advisory group’ model did not work for many of the young people we were trying to engage. This has informed wider learning on how best to involve a group of young people who are ‘less frequently heard’, and led to the development of a different model of public involvement. The poster outlines the model which emerged from this study, which explores whether traditional models of public involvement can potentially exclude some of the young people most likely to use health services, and identified the potential for new flexible and young people-centred approaches to involvement in research.