You're Welcome

All young people are entitled to appropriate health services. It is important that NHS and independent (private and voluntary) sector services take young people's needs into account. This includes NHS and independent, primary, community, specialist and acute services, as well as services that are subcontracted to provide health services to young people. It is also important to ensure seamless service delivery to young people, through effectively joined up services across health, local authority, community and voluntary and private sectors. The You're Welcome (YW) quality criteria set out principles to support health service providers to improve their services and be more young people friendly.

A self assessment toolkit will support services to work through the You're Welcome quality criteria and enable service commissioners and providers to assess whether services meet the criteria and are delivering young people friendly services.

The quality criteria cover ten areas, each with sub-criteria:

1. Access
2. Publicity
3. Confidentiality and consent
4. Environment
5. Staff training, skills, attitudes and values
6. Joined-up working
7. Monitoring and evaluation, and involvement of young people
8. Health issues for young people
9. Sexual and reproductive health services (SRH) 
10. Child and adolescent mental health services (CAMHS) - targeted and specialist services for young people on psychological wellbeing and mental health

The You're Welcome quality criteria are based on examples of effective practice working with young people aged under 20, and are designed to be applied to all health services – both young people specific and generic – covering general and acute health problems, chronic and long-term disease management (such as specialist care for asthma and diabetes) and health promotion.

The current You're Welcome rollout materials suit general practice, pharmacies, sexual health services, abortion service providers, school and college-based services and universal, targeted and specialist children and adolescent mental health services (CAMHS). Whilst all health services can assess themselves against the You're Welcome criteria, they are not yet fully tested and tailored for every sector, for example, to the acute sector. Ensuring services meet the You're Welcome quality criteria is the responsibility of all those working with young people.

Why is You're Welcome important?

• Young people have told us we all need to do better to ensure confidentiality, respect, and provide more information in health settings.
• You're Welcome has been developed to support you implement standard 4 of the National Service framework for Children, Young People, and Maternity Services.
• You're Welcome is currently placed within the NHS operating framework (2010/11) under the Strategy for Children and Young People's Health (2009)
• There is a significant emphasis on You're Welcome within the Healthy Child Programme (5-19) (2009)
• Teenage Pregnancy: Beyond 2010 (2010) places You're Welcome as a central tool to support services to become young people friendly.
• The evidence-based criteria will support services to achieve key targets (such as the under-18 conception target) as well as securing better services for young people.
• Keeping Children and Young People in Mind, the governments response to the CAMHS review emphasises the roll of You're Welcome in securing young people friendly services (2009)
• By 2020 the Government hopes all health services regularly used by young people – including all school and college based services – will carry the You're Welcome quality mark, a sign that they are young people friendly.