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- You are here : Resource Centre : Health and Wellbeing
Health and Wellbeing
GOL's work on Health and Well Being focuses on joining up initiatives to improve health outcomes for London’s Children and Young People through focusing on delivering PSA 12 – Improving Health and Wellbeing.
The focus on joining up health work is led strategically through the Joint Primary Care Trust / Local Authority Strategic Health Board, which has a focus on Children and Young People’s Health.
GOL are adding value by integrating work across a range of health initiatives tackling specific health issues for children and young people:
Obesity
Emotional Health and Wellbeing CAMHS
Infant Health
Services for Disabled children
The Children and Learners Division's health and wellbeing team comprises policy work on:
National healthy schools programme
The work on health will be steered by a governance team that includes CSIP (Care Services Improvement partnership) and Regional Public Health and will deliver hand in hand with a range of partners that include NHS London, the Youth Sports Trust, the Training and Development Agency, Together for Disabled Children and link closely with work around Substance misuse and Teenage pregnancy.
One of first pieces of work the team will focus on is, jointly with Young London Matters Strand 3B (Children in Care) and Local Authority partners, is improving the health outcomes of children in care.
Health themes
Obesity
Obesity work is primarily driven by Regional Public Health, who have in post Regional Food and Obesity Programme Managers. Work focussed on obesity aims to support local authorities to reduce rates of obesity in London through a range of interventions, including regional networks, research and data work and support around training and targeted programmes. This work is supported in Schools through Healthy Schools.
Emotional Health and Wellbeing CAMHS
Much of the Emotional Health and Wellbeing work is being delivered in partnership and through CSIP (Care Services Improvement Partnership). This includes individual support to Local Authorities on Improving CAMHS services (through CSIP Regional Development Workers) and general improvements in Emotional Health and Wellbeing of Children and Young People. The DCSF have conducted a review of Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services. The report is available on the DCSF website.
Work around EHWB and CAMHS is also being delivered through DCSF Targeted Mental Health in Schools Pathfinders. In London these are being piloted in Hackney, Merton and Southwark.
Young London Matters (Strand 1) ‘Emotional Health and Well being’ delivered 3 Targeted Mental Health pathfinders in Hackney, Southwark and Haringey. The reports from these pathfinders will be available shortly. We also expect there will be a dissemination event in the not too distant future. More detail on the work of this strand is available under ‘Emotional Health and Wellbeing’ on this site.
Infant Health
Infant Health work is housed within Regional Public Health and is led by a regional infant feeding co-ordinator. This work delivers looks specifically at increasing initiation and later rates of breastfeeding.
PE and Sport
Our work on Physical Activity and Sport is through supporting the Youth Sport Trust who are focussed on increasing the amount of physical activity children and young people are doing in and out of school curriculum. This work is based upon the investment by the Prime Minister in July 2007 that looks to establish the provision of 2 hours of high quality PE and sport per week for every child aged 5-16 within schools and three hours per week beyond the curriculum including sport within community settings.
School food
Work around school food includes working toward increasing the uptake of school lunches and is delivered through the Regional Public Health’s School Food Advisors, in partnership with Healthy Schools and is linked closely to our work on obesity.
Services for Disabled children
‘Aiming Higher for Disabled Children’ frames our (The government’s strategy for transforming services for Disabled Children) work on improving services for disabled children and is being led by the Care Services Improvement Partnership. A significant part of this work is the piloting of ‘Short Break Pathfinders’ overseen by ‘Together for Disabled Children’. London's short break pathfinders are Enfield and Sutton.
Commissioning
Work around commissioning is being led through the Strategic Board and is currently looking at taking forward developments around World Class commissioning. A conference / training session around this will take place shortly. Keep a look out for details on this site.
Play
Work around play is centred on supporting implementation of the Government’s Play Strategy, including working with Early years and Play England colleagues to support successful delivery of the DCSF Play Pathfinders and Playbuilders Pilots. These are being rolled out across London in Camden, Kensington & Chelsea, Enfield, Tower Hamlets, Hackney (Pathfinders). The playbuilder authorities are Islington, Lewisham, Lambeth, Brent, Wandsworth, Redbridge and Croydon.
Further Information
