Resources
The formation of RAiISE as a charity was driven by the passion to create resources for young people, families and teachers to enable them to make a smoother journey through the education environment whilst achieving their goals.
In this section you will find a number of resources, including our education support pack and our reports which we have created as part of the development of the pack and the charity as a whole.
RAiISE School Pack
To try to help and support teachers and families, we have created a RAiiSE School Pack. This is a pack designed by children, parents, teachers, doctors to try to support everyone involved in making school life better for a young person with an invisible illness.
The pack also includes physical resources including our ‘Health Passport’ (our more personalised take on an Individual Healthcare Plan), an accessible toilet sign and classroom exit cards.
Reports
Young peoples's experiences of chronic illness during the COVID-19 pandemic
For young people with invisible illnesses, the Covid -19 Pandemic and the last few years brought huge challenges. Our Covid-19 report gave us an insight into how young people had to balance living with a chronic and invisible illness, often shielding while trying to keep up with ever changing online school arrangements.
The report allowed us to highlight the additional challenges young people with invisible illnesses faced that their healthy peers did not. During the pandemic, young disabled/chronically ill people have often been forgotten, with stereotypes focussing more on elderly vulnerable people. Our report gave young people an opportunity to share the issues important to them.
National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) Guideline Scoping Workshop
In early 2019, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) published a guideline scope for social and emotional wellbeing in secondary education. NICE worked with Public Health England to develop the scope, and stakeholders (including RAiISE) were invited to participate in a workshop to develop and refine the guideline.
To help ensure our community’s voice was embedded into our feedback at this workshop. We conducted a survey to seek peoples input on the topic. I am delighted to share a brief summary of those findings in this report.
Invisible Illness in young people project - 2016
The project began with a small focus group in October 2015 to begin talks with other young people and families about what it is like for young people living day in and day out with chronic illnesses and chronic pain.
Following the first workshop, a survey was sent out to other young people who where interested in the project to get a wider opinion of what it was like living with an invisible illness, how it affected their school/college lives and lives in general, what support they would have liked or would like to develop for other young people, and in what format should this be communicated to other young people, families and schools.
Invisible Illness in young people project - 2015
On Friday 30 October 2015, a focus group was undertaken to talk about what it is like for young people living day in and day out with chronic illnesses, which includes chronic pain, but don’t look different from healthy young people all around us.
Sophie decided to raise awareness of living with an invisible illness by contacting patients through various routes including Alder Hey and college contacts and asking them to attend a focus group workshop. The report contains the findings of this initial workshop