Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCG’s) are statutory NHS bodies responsible for the planning and commissioning of healthcare services for their respective geographic areas. This involves monitoring and assessing the needs of their population, determining priorities, implementing targeted healthcare strategies and purchasing appropriate services.

On top of these locally led solutions, CCG’s also interpret and implement national guidelines at a district level. The 2015 Future in Mind report was one such national initiative, inviting CCG’s to consider and further develop how they promote, protect and improve the mental health and wellbeing of children and young people in their locality.

The heavy reading solution

As you would imagine the report was a weighty and by necessity officially worded document, designed primarily to guide strategic activity. Acknowledging this, and valuing stakeholder participation, Wirral CCG commissioned DCD to help creatively translate the content into a format that championed the overarching aim of the document, that of providing services that are readily accessible to children and young people.

Working with a group of young people that have accessed local mental health services, the BIGGER Picture approach was used to examine and explore what it was that they saw as the most pertinent points in the document. Working together, the group soon began to explain in their own terms what they valued about the CCG’s efforts. Building on each other’s contributions, the group intuitively aligned around a shared theme, using ideas of space travel and advanced technology to represent the future-focused aspirations that the transformational document set out. Though extremely playful in nature, these imaginative distillations transformed the technical into an easily accessible narrative.

Rolling up their sleeves, the group then painted their colourful storyboards, producing two large-scale graphics. Bright and bold, these vibrant displays of participation in action not only became a permanent feature in a local medical centre, they also provided the structure and content to produce a compelling summary of the main document’s key features.

Each of the images were photographed and digitally re-mastered to help illustrate what became a handy A5 booklet. Condensing thousands of words down to something better suited to the needs of its young target audience. Desktop published, this fun and accessible overview was then provided as a professional print-ready file, an online page-turning web application and as a simple PDF download. Check out the online version here.

Created for and by…

Literally exemplifying the maxim ‘created for young people, by young people’, this unique approach to making public facing materials less formal and more meaningful, whilst still retaining a professional and strongly branded identity, has huge potential, always producing surprising and evocative results.

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