Young People's Health Challenge

Description

The Authority required a national provider or consortia to develop a "Young People's Health Challenge" award(s) for 7-14-year olds. This will be a programme that aims to teach young people about the NHS and encourage them to undertake some social action activity to support their local community or the NHS. The toolkit will be 'open access' meaning that any young people's organisation such as youth clubs, uniformed youth organisations or schools can pick up the module and deliver it with the young people they work with thereby providing the opportunity to influence a wide range of young people from diverse backgrounds. The provider will develop a suite of resources using different mediums to ensure that the toolkit is accessible to all (i.e., online, paper and face to face) and can support a wide range of youth providers to deliver and support their young people to complete the module. Young People's Health Challenge aims to teach young people aged 7 -14 about the NHS and encourage them to undertake some social action activity to support the NHS. This is key for the future of our NHS whilst providing young people with valuable skills and aspirations to work or volunteer within the NHS or engage in social action. In addition, educating young people about self-care and appropriate use of NHS services can have an impact on the entire family's use of NHS services and social action is known to provide health and wellbeing benefits to individuals. Introducing social action at a young age can establish a lifetime of volunteering and social action, thereby providing a protective element to an individual's health and wellbeing. The NHS People Plan recognises the value of introducing young people into volunteering roles in the NHS with a view to encouraging them to think about a longer-term career in the NHS. The NHS Long Term plan builds on this encouraging greater access for younger volunteers as part of the commitment to increase diversity of volunteers. NHS Cadets was established for this purpose, working with 14-18-year olds and is delivered in partnership with St John Ambulance. At present we have no provision for younger aged children. This programme builds further on this, working with younger children to start to introduce them to the NHS at a time when they will just be thinking about what they might like to be when they are older.

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