Staying Positive

Staying Positive workshops are for 12-18 year olds and are run by people with long-term conditions who are aged between 14-25.

• So you live with a long-term health condition
• You spend a lot of time at the doctors or hospital
• You get nagged by adults, friends and health care professionals (for all the right reasons) about what you should and shouldn’t do

So why should you want to spend more of your precious time talking about your health?

Because these workshops are very different.

Why are they different?

• Because over 100 young people of your age (12-17 years old) with similar conditions as you, told us what they wanted in workshops

What did they tell us?

• Family, friends and health care professionals can all help, but sometimes you can have difficulty talking to them
• You did not want to lose any more time at school by visiting yet more doctors and hospitals
• You spend enough time in the classroom at school and didn’t want to spend even more time doing the same thing in your spare time

So what did we do?

• We trained young people of your age living with a health condition to run the workshops

The Workshops

• We arranged the workshops around the things you said were important to you-
  • How medication affects your social life
  • How you can exercise safely and keep it fun
  • How you can keep up with school work and how to get the career you want
  • Learning how to cope with the change from Children’s Health Services to Adult Health Services
  • What to do when you are fed up and feeling down
  • Discussing that subject...sex what are the special problems that you face
  • The last part of each workshop is a fun activity with nothing to do with you health, like learning to play African drums or take great photos!

Workshops run on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon, we can pay transport costs. 

What course participants say

Chloe - London

"My confidence grew session after session and it was great having a chance to relax and talk to others who have had similar experiences."

My name is Chloe Cupid and I was a participant in the Staying Positive Programme run by EPP (Expert Patients Programme). I am 18 years old and currently studying for my A-levels. I have a long term condition - scoliosis, a curvature of the spine which causes me back and shoulder pain quite frequently.

It is a course run for young people to help them self-manage their conditions. At first I had no idea what it was going to be like and expected it to be like school.

More on Chloe's story