How will you know it is working?

We hope that the suggestions provided in this guide will be useful in terms of providing direction for how to commission better mental health services for young people aged 16–25. However, to fully understand how effective your processes are for undertaking young people-focused commissioning, it will be necessary to complete the feedback loop and ask the young people involved what difference it has made to them and their peers.

The experience of Right Here has been that improving services and support can result in a whole raft of changes, including the following:

• Greater service uptake and services which are more acceptable to young people.
• Improved mental health and wellbeing of young people using services.
• Greater levels of empowerment and engagement among those  young people involved in services and the commissioning process.
• Fewer stigmatising attitudes by professionals towards young people and their capabilities.
• Clearer and more transparent decision-making processes.

It may require some extra time and resources to support these changes and encourage meaningful  participation to permeate through the whole commissioning cycle. Our advice would be to take it gradually and persevere.

If further encouragement is required, we have also found that youth centred approaches to commissioning  can make the whole process a lot more enjoyable and stimulating for professionals. So… enjoy!¹