Being the best place to grow up
We want to make north east London the best place to grow up for our babies, children and young people. As a health and care system, the NHS, local authority and voluntary and community organisations work together to ensure we support a healthy childhood and reduce inequalities.
As we work together to we have conversations around what does good care look like and how are we going to get there? As part of a series of workshops with over 150 NHS North East London colleagues in July, we asked two questions:
- What should a healthy childhood look like?
- How can we work together as a system to ensure a healthy childhood for all in north east London?
With everyone bringing their own skills, expertise and knowledge to the discussion, it was great to have such a broad range of input.
What should a healthy childhood look like?
Whilst this is different for different people, there was collective understanding around; feeling safe, being happy, having a sense of belonging, play, being confident, allowed to explore and use imagination, feel loved and having opportunities to express themselves.
How can we work together as a system to ensure a healthy childhood for all in north east London?
Bringing together thoughts and ideas from across the system will allow for a more joined up approach, looking at other factors that contribute to healthcare outcomes such as social, environmental and financial. A life course approach was mentioned throughout, looking at pathways, experiences and options from pre-conception, through to antenatal and postnatal before we explore the impact of health outcomes in children.
Child Health Commitments
As we work together we look to individuals and organisations to make their commitment in improving child health outcomes for all our communities. Starting with our staff at the NHS North East London launch events in July, individuals made their commitments on how they could contribute to making north east London the best place to grow up. Some of the commitments included:
- advocating for children’s services
- promoting education for good medicine management for children
- supporting mental health of young adults
- helping reduce air pollution to improve outcomes for children with asthma
- using data to identify inequalities in child health outcomes
all these commitments will contribute to healthier and happier outcomes for babies, children and young people in north east London.
It takes everyone in our Health and Care Partnership System to help make this happen.
