Hopes and fears about growing up: A co-produced approach to understanding young people's lived experiences of transition to adulthood.

The multimodal and collaborative nature of the studentship will develop a broad and rich understanding of how best to develop inclusive transitions that work, informing practice and research with important new findings. This will engage with key areas of scholarship including: childhood studies, inclusive education, community psychology and social justice. Young people in Rotherham face additional challenges moving into adulthood, due to high levels of deprivation and mainly low-skilled and low-paid employment (CRDC 2019). For young people with identified mental health needs, the struggle to connect with appropriate effective service provision occurs alongside everyday challenges of adulthood transition. The ESRC ECY Pathway acknowledges the challenge of preparing young people for an unknown future in a changing world. It is this challenge that the project partner, Rotherham Clinical Commissioning Group, has identified as a priority and which the iHuman Research Centre has the expertise to respond to.

At the transition from childhood to adulthood young people are expected to make life-changing decisions while experiencing significant physical and psychological changes (Public Health England, 2019). At this time, mental health can be particularly vulnerable. 17% of 17-19 year olds have at least one mental health disorder, and half of those have either self-harmed or attempted to take their own life (LGA, 2019). However, when it is perhaps needed most, mental health services are failing young adults, as many are lost at the "cliff edge" at 18 (DH, 2014). Services are often alienating and lack responsiveness to the lifestyles of vulnerable families, resulting in high (DNA) Do Not Attend rates (for mental health services) and premature drop out altogether (NHS DH, 2015). For many in the health system, there is no transition planning at all (CQC, 2014).
In Rotherham, in particular, disadvantageous contexts impact upon young lives. Young adults claiming incapacity benefits (with mental health as the leading reason), is 3 times the national average (Beatty et al, 2019). Much of central Rotherham has very low levels of internet access or computer ownership (CRDC 2018, see below) meaning connectivity for social, career and education reasons is compromised. Whilst Rotherham CCG commissions a range of services supporting young people approaching adulthood, the lived experience of young people in transition is poorly understood. iHuman has developed a toolkit for co-production with young people to enable meaningful engagement in research focused on topics that concern them https://livinglifetothefullest.org/. This toolkit will be developed alongside Rotherham co-researchers to explore transition experiences, understand challenges, and find new ways of countering them. This research builds on iHuman's expertise to understand young people's fears and hopes around transition in education, health and care settings. Innovative online and arts-based approaches will create opportunities for rich communication with those sometimes excluded from conversation and findings.