“Every child should have the same rights as everyone else has”
“Children that engage in extracurricular activities are more likely to do well in GCSEs and employed early in adulthood”
“Young people and children are 20 per cent of our population, but 100 per cent of our future”
Our Creating Healthy Childhoods webinar shone a light on how all of us are responsible in creating a world that fosters spaces and opportunities for children to experience healthy and fulfilled childhoods.
A healthy upbringing is critical to the health of our population as it sets in motion our own wellbeing for life, and how we can continue to provide it for future generations, using our learning and experiences.
However, in the UK, the lives of our children are not as satisfactory as they could be.
Five years ago, the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health undertook a landmark report in 2020 to reduce child health inequalities, prioritise public health, prevention and early intervention and to build and strengthen local, cross-sector services.
Despite this, BMA report from 2024 suggested there is still a need for greater investment in childhood services, explaining that spending on Sure Start and children’s public health services has decreased in the last decade. Plus, the number of health visitors and school nurses has also declined.
Work needs to be done to address the size of the problem and, ultimately, to turn those numbers around.
The Centre For Young lives has outlined for a new national play strategy, while the Play Commission Report called for a National Wake-Up Call on Play.
Our Creating Healthy Childhoods webinar was an opportunity to share best practice from influential and progressive voices from across different sectors that are working to affect change, and what levers they think need pulling to drive change quicker.
Intelligent Health’s CEO and founder, Dr William Bird, hosted the session and the points of discussion were:
- What are the current major issues for children?
- What do they want?
- What do we need to create?
On the panel were:
- Sarah Brown, National Head of Children, Young People & Perinatal Mental Health at NHS England
- Paul Lindley OBE, award-winning British entrepreneur, social campaigner and best-selling author
- Ingrid Skeels, co-founder of Playing Out CIC, a parent-led movement to restore children’s freedom to play out where they live
- Adrian Bethune, primary school teacher, Associate lecturer, Deputy Chair of the Well Schools Collective and the founder of Teachappy
Panel highlights
Sarah has seen significant progress at NHS England to increase the range of services and support that are available to children and young people. But the challenge is that this is against the backdrop of an increase in mental health disorders.
Paul spoke about the importance of focusing on youth as and outlined what he believes are the three ways that are key to help children have better lives.
Ingrid focused her discussion on a child’s freedom to play, move and to socialise and to belong in the places where they live.
Adrian discussed his retraining as a primary school teacher and the introduction of physical activity breaks to get children more active during the day.
Attendee Q&A
For the second half of the webinar, the spotlight was turned to attendees’ questions. Here are a couple of highlights that demonstrate the engaging discussion that was had.
School grounds are often empty on weekends and holidays. How can we better use these large idle playing areas for children?
Adrian Bethune
There are difficulties. At our school we’ve got massive field with a football pitch and a playground. In theory, on the weekend, our gates could be left open and kids could come and play but the practicality is you know that you can’t just let anyone come into a school’s grounds.
At the same time, what schools can do is have a huge range of extracurricular curricular activities available to children after school e.g. photography clubs, cookery clubs. We have lots of sports and those are all completely free for children to access.
It provides parents with wraparound care. So, they can sign their children up to these after school clubs and so they get extra childcare for free. They’re not having to pay for these clubs. And secondly, it gives those children an opportunity to explore areas of learning that maybe aren’t available in the national curriculum during the day, but they’re fascinated by photography or they really want to learn how to cook.
There is research that shows that children that engage in extracurricular activities are more likely to do well in GCSEs and are more likely to be employed in early adulthood.
Paul Lindley
I think it’s the language we use affects our culture. And the language we use is identifying a building that the public has paid for. We’ve all paid for, everybody on this call will have paid for a school building.
We call it a school. But, if we called it a community centre or a community asset, or some other word, that was for school at certain times of the day at certain parts of the year, but at 4 or 5pm in the afternoon might be a pharmacy for those same parents to collect prescriptions or it might be a housing officer might be there or doctors might be there or we can use it for other public services or at the weekend we could use it for other things like village hall or a town hall. We’d have a different mindset about what that is and we might set up different insurance and health and safety stuff around that.
So, ultimately those buildings are paid for by everybody and we should all be able to have 24/7, ideally ,or throughout the year anyway, access to those buildings. If we change the language we use, we change the mindset of what those buildings are for.
What are the two or three big policy decisions that government could make to create healthy childhoods?
Sarah Brown
I mean, from my perspective of course, what we don’t do is dictate how local systems and local communities should be organising themselves around the health system.
So I think (for local communities to) feel empowered and for the government not to get in the way of local systems being able to innovate and being able to feel that they can be bold. As a national policy lead, it’s thinking about how can I facilitate, support and be able to create that kind of culture within the systems that I’m working with so that people do feel empowered to be able to act upon what children and young people are telling them really matters.
Paul: Okay, I’ll go for a huge one and that is: incorporate into the law a right to play for children in England, which Scotland and Wales have already done.
The UK has signed up to the United Nations Convention on the rights of the child which gives a right to play.
If we had that in law, the child has a right to play that would flow down to our communities and to our local authorities a duty would be imposed upon them.
Children would have a right to the access to the time and the space and the permissions to play and that’s where we should start.
William: How close do you think we are to getting interest in government to get make this happen?
Paul: Well, I’d hope that the British government, that is responsible for England, would look to Scotland and Wales and see some of the evidence that’s coming through there.
I’d hope that they would trial and pilot some spaces. For example, Leeds Council voluntarily have a child-centered policy around everything that they do and there’s a lot to learn from them. Every child should have the same rights as everyone else has.
Ingrid Skeels
I think that would trickle down cross-departmentally so many things to do with traffic speeds on residential roads, how housing is managed, how new homes are built.
If we had that right to play, children’s need and right to play and belong where they live, it would alter a lot of policies.
I want to hear the government actually speak to the problem we’ve got with children.
We’ve got, you know, deep problems of unhappiness and bad mental health and bad physical health. And to actually put that at the top of their agendas and say we are going to change things for children and this is how we’re going to do it and play would be absolutely central to that.
Adrian: It’s actually a TomTom advert I share when I deliver talks and training to teachers and school leaders which is: ‘you’re not stuck in traffic you are traffic’.
So, first and foremost, I think if we start to change, then the system starts to change.
In terms of policy, I would like to see a national measure of children’s wellbeing in the country. I know Lord Richard Layard, Lord Gus O’Donnell are trying to push for that in the children’s well-being bill and it’s partly because of this belief that economists say this we measure what we treasure.
So, we measure GDP and so a lot of our policy focus goes on what can we do to boost GDP. And actually, if we measure children’s wellbeing because we treasure it, we will start to change and do things in order to boost children’s wellbeing.
It also gives children a voice and a sense of agency to be asked: “What is it about school you like? What don’t you like? What changes would you like to see?”
And it also empowers parents. There’s research from the Youth Sport Trust that shows that most parents choose a school based on where they think their child’s going to be happiest.
And if schools are, a place measuring wellbeing, they’re placing wellbeing at the heart of their culture, their ethos, their curriculum. Parents can make informed choices about where they feel their child’s going to be happiest and thrive the best.
Conclusion
Creating Healthy Childhoods is the second in our webinar series that platforms best practice across key policy areas in areas influencing population and planetary health.
Having a four-person experienced panel in the fields of education, entrepreneurship and healthcare created an immersive and wide-ranging discussion with the 75 people in the virtual room.
The takeaways above are just some of the progressive and though-provoking conversation that was had so please check out the full video to discover how we can foster spaces and opportunities for children to experience healthy and fulfilled childhoods.
Find out more
At Intelligent Health, part of our mission is to improve health by connecting people to each other, their communities and their environment.
This webinar series is one way of combining ideas, sharing best practice and developing the conversation of many aspects of health and wellbeing.
If you want to support individuals, communities, workplaces and partners to improve health at scale and discover the solutions we offer to improve people’s lives in your area, school or workplace, these webinars are for you.
The UK-wide audience for this webinar was made up of people from charities, schools, councils, planning associations, sports groups and local government.
The next webinar will take place soon, follow our LinkedIn page for all the details.
You can find out more about Intelligent Health on our website and more about what is being done to create healthy childhoods on NHS England’s children and young people page
The Play Commission’s report: Everything to Play For: A National Wake-Up Call on Play is available to read on its website as well as the Youth Sport Trust’s Well Schools movement.
You can also find out more about our panel:
