Future Pulse was a 3 year partnership between Bright Ideas Nottingham and the Carers’ Federation. The project sought to improve access to health & wellbeing services for children and young people under 25 in Nottingham.

Future Pulse with the first official launch event for professional organisations, followed by 3 other launch events for a range of age groups. The events for children and young people enabled us to involve them in the shaping of the project from the outset. At the ‘Design a Project’ event young people got creative with expressing their opinions and views. They also developed the name for the project ‘Future Pulse’ and designed the logo with the help of a professional media designer. The second launch was our ‘Feel Good Nottingham’ Take Over Show at 97.5 kemet FM were young people created adverts to promote the project and got involved in the live radio programme taking place at the time  Our final launch event was ‘Patty Dumplin and the Wellbeing’s’ for children aged 5-11 at the Central Library in Nottingham City centre. Children and young people had a lot of fun creating Health and ‘Wellbeing’ Characters whilst telling us their experiences of health services such as the doctors and dentist.

The Future Pulse project recruited a team of children and young people to create a Mystery Shopper Team and a Media Team.  The Mystery Shoppers were trained and supported to visit health and wellbeing services to evaluate the extent to which they were child/young person friendly. A report on the service was written up after each visit and then presented to the service concerned in order for them to decide where they needed to take action and make improvements.  The activity also provided evidence for health and well-being services who were working towards national quality standards, You’re Welcome and 15 Steps. The Media Team were also provided with training from an experienced radio presenter/journalist. They collected views on health and wellbeing services from other children and young people in Nottingham and created radio programmes, adverts and vox-pops for radio.

Some of the young people involved in the project received national recognition for their work and were invited to take part in an NHS England event where they addressed the full conference.  Kath Evans, a representative from NHS England then attended the final celebration event where all children and young people who took part received a formal thank you and certificate from the Lord Mayor of Nottingham.

Social Media Links to Future Pulse:

Tweets by futurePulse

Future Pulse was funded from 2014 to 2017 by Nottingham City CCG.

Future Pulse Launch Events:

Future Pulse Media & Training team:

The Future Pulse Media team had a core number of 14 members of young people under 25 from the Nottingham City area. The team received media training and are currently out and about in Nottingham city collecting ‘vox pops’ of young peoples views on health services. The team also produced a radio programme which have been pre recorded & aired on 97.5 Kemet fm.

Future Pulse Mystery Shoppers:

Patty Dumplin & The Wellbeing’s Launch event

Design a Project Launch event

Feel Good Nottingham Launch event