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Healthy Lives, Brighter Futures - The Strategy For Children and Young People's Health
Healthy Lives, Brighter Futures - The Strategy For Children and Young People's Health
Fiona Smith
Adviser in Children’s & Young People’s Nursing,
Royal College of Nursing, United Kingdom
Healthy lives, brighter futures is a
joint strategy
A healthy childhood is critically
important
Children and young people Supported by medical,
are healthier than ever technological, social and
before economic advances
– the more deprived a child is, the more likely that the child
will attend A&E for an asthma-related admission
•Parents of 39% of children aged over 5 tell us that their child has
unmet leisure needs
Mental health: key facts
• 1 in 10 children has a mental
disorder
• 4% of children have an
emotional disorder
Neither parents
working
One-parent family
Families where
both parents work
Two-parent family
45.0
Projection of trend
40.0
35.0
30.0
25.0
Trajectory required
20.0
to meet target
15.0
10.0
5.0
0.0
1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010
Prevalence of obese children by
parental obesity
Actions: School-age children +
Young People
• Healthy child
programme for school-
age children to be
developed
• National Healthy
Schools Programme to
be strengthened
Workforce calculations
1 school nurse was needed for every
2,500 children
The school nurse:
• is a specialist
practitioner working
across education and
health
• needs to have
advanced and specialist
knowledge and skills to
meet the needs of
children and their
families
The role of the school nurse:
• health promoter
• health educator
They used to check for nits, but 60 years after the NHS was founded
school nurses have a very different role……..
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/7493562.stm
Children and young people are
a high priority
•Challenges persist
– e.g. Infant mortality, teenage pregnancy, hospitalisations, LTC
management, disability, mental health
•No room for complacency: The Child Health Strategy is the vehicle for
making it happen
Investing in school nursing -
long term outcomes
School nursing is a universally accessible service,
non stigmatising and acceptable to most families
and school communities
Fiona.smith@rcn.org.uk