it s like a new life that you never knew about until now
TRANSCRIPT
‘It’s like a new life that you never
knew about until now’
: L i v i n g w i t h H I V - T h e C H I V A Y o u t h
C o m m i t t e e ( C Y C ) o f Y o u n g P e o p l e .
STRUCTURE OF THE CYC
We are 12 young people aged from 12 to 18 from across the UK and Ireland, all living
with HIV
We hold our positions on the youth committee for 2 years and there is a chairperson
and deputy chairperson.
We aim to have a good spread of gender, age and geography
People apply every year during the summer and the current youth committee look at
the anonymous applications and select new members by making a group
decision.
We are funded by BBC Children in Need
The aim of the CYC is to provide a voice for children and young people growing up with
HIV in the UK and to allow them to influence the treatment and care they receive.
We work closely with the CHIVA Executive Committee and a variety of other
organisations and agencies.
KEY ACHIEVEMENTS
We have produced youth friendly guidance and
resources for healthcare professionals to use in clinics
when talking to children and young people. These are
the Side Effects Sheet, Your Rights Card and Treat Me
Like This Guidance. We have found that these
resources help Doctors to have conversations with
young people about topics which sometimes are
difficult like side effects, adhering to medicine, and
sex, HIV and the law. We have copies of these with us
if you would like to see them.
We have a young people's website - 'If Only You Knew'
which we recently spent a weekend updating with our
stories. We talk about how we felt when we found out
about our HIV, who else we have told and how that's
gone, how we deal with relationships, what it's like at
school and at home, and also about medicine and
how we feel about taking it. We also talk about the
CHIVA Camp and what an impact that has had on how
we deal with HIV. The website is designed for children
and young people - it is split into age sections.
We have an active twitter account - @freedom2spk We
use this account to combat stigma and educate
others and we have a rota where different members of
the youth committee can take it in turns to tweet. We
recently took part in an NHS twitter chat around the
hashtag #CYPMefirst which is about putting children
and young people first in health settings. We
responded to an online debate about when and how
children and young people like to be seen alone with a
healthcare professional and we were able to put
across the views of children and young people living
with HIV.
Through our work with the Association of Young People's
Health we have contributed our views about children
and young people's experiences in A&E departments,
and how we feel about the NHS online record keeping
systems and our confidentiality, particularly in primary
healthcare settings.
We have represented the UK at the last two International
HIV/AIDS Conferences and plan to have a strong
presence at this year’s conference which is in
Amsterdam this July!
We would now like you to take a moment to answer this
question in small groups or in pairs. We will not be
asking for feedback, but we just would like you to
think about the issues. We can circulate if you have
any questions for us:
What do you think are the main issues for
children and young people growing up with HIV
in the UK?
You have 10 minutes.
Thank you for those discussions.
For the last part of our workshop we are going to read
out some testimonials from our young people’s
website ‘If Only You Knew’. These are about lots of
different issues which we face. We are going to play a
slide show of photos from our CHIVA Support Camp,
which is a residential which takes place every August
and is for 11-16 year olds living with HIV in the UK and
Ireland.
Thank you for listening to us.