Social Innovation Camp have teamed up with the NECLES HIEC to put together a one-day Express Social Innovation Camp on young people and health on Saturday, 25^th February, at the Young Foundation in Bethnal Green.

Why?

Young people have particular health needs – both preventative and in dealing with the healthcare system—which aren’t well catered to – the healthcare system is designed for adults and children, and when going through the transition from one to the other, the opportunity for confusion and problems come up.

Over the past six weeks, Social Innovation Camp has run a series of workshops with groups of both healthcare professionals of young people in order to find out what both groups think is missing or important. We’ve come up with five areas that we think are ripe for new applications.

We’re going to assemble groups of 8-12 of the most interesting and clever young people, designers, developers, and healthcare experts to work on these five questions:

1)     How can we help make the transition to adulthood work more smoothly?

Moving between 16, 18, and full adulthood involves significant changes in rights, responsibilities, and legal status. Issues that have come up include: “Will my GP tell my mum that I smoke?”, “Why do I have to change my psychiatrist now that I’m 18?”, and “When does my mum’s responsibility end?”

2)     How can we help those with health and wellbeing issues avoid/reduce the impact of social isolation?

Social Isolation can be worse for physical health than both drinking and smoking.   In order to overcome unemployment, restrictions due their health or wellbeing issue, the responsibility of caring for a sick relative or any other the other causes that lead to loneliness: How can we help young people reach out to existing or new networks?

3)     How can users better use their own medical history to have a smoother health care experience?

Individuals may not remember all of their jabs/immunisations, or important bits of their medical history (particularly if they have an unusual allergy or intolerance). At the same time, ongoing health issues require coordination of different specialists and GPs. Is there a way to use our mobile phones, a website, SMS or something else to help make this situation better?

4)     How can young people make a game out of eating well and getting fit?

We all know we need to eat better and get fit – but how? When starting work, training, or school, you’re out on your own for the first time – we had so many ideas on this, that I’m just going to list a few and let your imaginations run wild:

• The Fridge of Last Resort: what can I make with what’s in my fridge?
• 5-a-day competition among your friends (twitter/facebook, or something else?)
• Some sort of short-term game that gets people moving & having fun

5)     How do I know if I need to see the doctor, and can we make it a better experience?

Sometimes, you don’t know what you need to know. You go to the doctor after 24 hours, and they tell you to wait it out for another 48, or you get told to take over-the-counter medication even if you’ve already tried that – then you feel like you’ve wasted your own time as well as the NHS’s. Can we build something that will allow a simple question and answer – i.e., is it bad enough, or how long should I wait before bothering a GP? How should it work – via text, phone, or email (or something else?

What we’re doing about it

We’re going to get some groups together to work on the questions outlined above.  The young people will lead the discussions on the day- we’ll give these young people some support from developers, designers, business people, and healthcare professionals who form part of the group.

The task, over the course of eight hours, will be to work together with existing NHS datasets and expertise in new ways to come up with a bang-up, fantastic and unusual solution to use the web, mobile or texting, or the Internet to address one of these problems. NHS London is going to put up to a maximum of £10,000 behind one of the ideas from the day. Along with this they will help with providing the right support from inside the NHS to help make the idea happen – expert help, , and the ability to talk to the right person- all that makes a difference.

Excited about the possibility? Want to come along on the day? Sign up here, and let us know which issue you’d like to work on.

Have further questions? Want to support the teams in another way? Get in touch here.

What we’re doing

On 25^th February in central London, Social Innovation Camp will working with the North East London HIEC on a one-day Social Innovation Camp Express focussed on improving health for young people.

We’re going to bring together about 50 great software developers, designers, healthcare professionals, and some young people to work on some stuff that matters. We’re going to start with 5 questions, which we’ll develop into 5 ready-to-go ideas on the day.

NHS London have agreed to support the  winner with a grant of up to £5,000 plus some in-kind support to turn the idea into a reality – so besides having a great day, at least one of the ideas will have the support it needs to become a reality.

Why we’re doing it?

We remember being young, and concerned with our health. Unfortunately, most of the advice we got wasn’t right, either in delivery, content, or tone- it often looked like this:

We didn’t believe that, then, and we don’t now. Therefore, we want to find out what young people think is important, then help them make it happen, using real service design for real people.

How’s that going to work, then?

We’re doing a few meetings with people who work in healthcare as well as young people – we want to find out what both groups think is important, and then get them together to work on those ideas.

Our meetings are fun- we’re going to talk for about 10 minutes, then get down to an exercise where we’ll get everyone talking to each other and working on problems immediately.

These are scheduled for (click the links to sign up):

11^th January, UCLPartners, 1700 (Aimed at healthcare professionals)

25th January, at the Livity Offices in Brixton, 1630 (Aimed at young people)

24th January, UCLPartners, 1700 (Aimed at healthcare professionals)

Then, on the 25^th February…

We’ll then put out a call for participants – From the ideas and things we discover in our workshops, we’ll put together five questions, and get some teams together to work on them – this will include some of the UK’s best developers, designers, health workers, and clever young people who want to make a difference. We’ll work hard for a day, and then our judges will choose a winner for the day, which will get taken forth.

We’ll do a bit of work with the teams afterwards if there’s something that they want to continue, winners or not.

What are you waiting for? Sign up for one of the events above or get in touch with your questions here or on our twitter @sicamp.

The year is coming to a close and we’re just about to pack up our turkeys off to meet their maker and celebrate with our families. We’ve had a brilliant year and just a little bit of news is coming below.

Room for Tea selected for Keeping Connected Business Challenge

You may remember our runner-up, Room for Tea (originally Homeshare), from Social Innovation Camp Edinburgh. They applied to the Keeping Connected Business Challenge, along with the design expertise our long-time friends FutureGov and they’ll now have 5 months of funding to turn their fledgling business into a reality.

We caught up with Milena recently, and she’s very excited & may need your support – let us know if you want to give her a hand, and follow Room for Tea on their website or Twitter.

Here’s a Hand to pilot with Edinburgh Council

Lend a Hand have decided that they’ll be called Here’s a Hand, and they’ve gotten some support from Edinburgh Council to run a pilot of their service in the New Year – the team is hard at work getting code ready and working with our friends at Snook and still getting support from IRISS and NESTA. As well as being featured recently on STV.

Keep in touch with them on twitter, facebook, or google+ (phew!). We’re looking forward to the results of the pilot!

…and that’s the end of a very good year

You may see our soon-to-be-quarterly newsletter in your inbox shortly with a round-up of everything that’s been done. If not, subscribe to our mailing list here.

What would it be like if the way you look on the outside didn’t fit the way you feel inside .. if you were expected to be a man but felt like a woman or vice versa … or if you didn’t feel yourself to be either? We all have some idea how it feels when we’re expected to behave differently to the way we naturally wish to behave. But how would it feel if this affected every aspect of your life?

This is how it is for trans people whose gender identity does not match their body sex. Some may only ever feel truly at ease if they undergo medical treatment to change their body. They may be very visible through that transition, and subject to ridicule. Others may celebrate their difference and always wish to be proudly non-conforming whatever the personal cost.

In our society we now embrace a much greater degree of diversity than we did in the past. Trans people–and particularly trans children–are still subject to abuse, ridicule and discrimination simply because they may not look the way we expect them to. Imagine growing up knowing you’d been labeled as the wrong gender. If you expressed this openly you would be likely to face incomprehension from your family and bullying at school. If you hid it away and denied it until it burst out in adulthood, it could have devastating results on your immediate social circle. It’s not surprising that research has shown 41% of trans people have attempted suicide at least once in their life … and those are just the ones we know about.

There are some good signs: UK Government legislation now protects trans people better than in most other countries and recognises their medical needs in the new Government Transgender Action Plan. The trans community is becoming more vocal in engaging with individuals to call time on the stereotypes and jokes at the expense of trans people, and many of those individuals are responding well. The reality format of Channel 4’s recent My Transsexual Summer allowed non-trans people to get a taste of what life is like for seven very different trans individuals. A few brave parents have spoken in the media about the abuse they’ve faced from other parents and teachers for supporting their trans kids on the journey to be who they need to be, and they’ve been generally applauded for doing so.

Transgender is not the same as gay. Trans people like anybody else can be gay or straight. Trans people however face the same kinds of discrimination gay people used to face (and still do face to some extent). A generation of gay kids is growing up in the UK supported by their families, free of discrimination, fulfilled in their lives and relationships. We need to make this happen for future generations of trans people.

What can we do?

Come work with us on 13^th January at Channel 4 for a long, inspiring day that could make a massive difference in the lives of trans people.

On Road Media and Trans Media Watch are hosting a Trans Camp to help develop some new approaches to shift perceptions of trans people in the media – these could be tech-based or not. We’re seeking help from a range of media professionals, developers, and designers, to think and address these five questions:

1. There is very little awareness of the existence of trans children. How do we change that?
2. What can we do to help the media create more accurate coverage about trans people? Headlines are appalling – how can we start to change them?
3. Can we find a constructive way of galvanising the trans community to report on transphobia in the media in a way that can be acted upon?
4. How do we make producers of comedy aware of who they are making comedy about?
5. How can we use the web to help family, friends and partners better accept and support trans people?

There’s a prize of £1,000 at the end to make the best idea a reality- and there will be a series of funders there looking to support innovative proposals to address discrimination.

You’ll meet a range of interesting, dedicated people, work hard on building some great ideas, sample the excellent Channel 4 catering, and make a profound difference.

Sound interesting? Sign up here to get involved.

The funding will help us continue to run Social Innovation Camps both here in the UK and around the world, and gives us our cornerstone investment in our next round of Bethnal Green Ventures, allowing us to make small investments in promising technology-based social ventures.

We’re looking forward to working with NESTA as well as the other organisations in the SVI fund. If you’d like more information about this or you’d like to help out, do get in touch.