Young People's Health Partnership News

Improving Children & Young People's Mental Health & Wellbeing

What do we know about young people's views on wellbeing? A new report and outputs from a review of evidence for universal approaches to improving children and young people's mental health and wellbeing has been published by Public Health England. The Young People's Health Partnership worked with other partners from the Health and Wellbeing Alliance to gather existing evidence and run focus group discussions with young people to explore a range of young people’s perspectives about what keeps them mentally well. We developed a Scoping review of existing evidence and a briefing setting out the results and recommendations from discussions with young people to inform the review. You can access all the other work of the Special Interest Group here.

Children & Young People's Transformation Programme

We were delighted to support the recruitment of youth members to the Children & Young People's Transformation board. There was a huge amount of interest in the roles and the NHS are shortlisting and interviewing applicants. We look forward to hearing more about the new youth members in the new year.

Advancing our health: prevention in the 2020s

Between July and October this year, the Cabinet Office and the Department of Heath & Social Care held a consultation on proposals to tackle the causes of preventable ill health in England. You can read key messages from the Young People’s Health Partnership response to the Prevention Green Paper on our website. Individual members of YPHP also responded to the consultation.

Period Poverty Taskforce
In September we attended a meeting of the Government's cross-sector Period Poverty Taskforce. The Young People's Health Partnership was approached to join the workstream on stigma and education and we look forward to working with the taskforce to help develop a clear understanding of the key issues driving stigma and shame around menstruation and help set out options for a sustainable approach to ending stigma and taboo.

Social Prescribing
Work on social prescribing continues with 4 youth link workers employed across 5 delivery locations. 198 young people are being supported by the workers. StreetGames are working with NHS England to develop a working model based on the pliot that could inform a national roll-out. October also saw the launch of the Social Prescribing Academy, which will work to standardise the range and quality of social prescribing models, develop and share good practice, and bring together stakeholders from health, housing, local government, arts, culture and sport sectors to deepen the range of options available to social prescribers.

Young People & Substance Use
We were very pleased to be asked to chair a roundtable discussion focussing on young people and substance use. The purpose of the meeting was to bring practitioners, VCSE specialists, commissioners and policy makers together to increase understanding of the issues facing young people and what services are being delivered. The meeting highlighted links between alcohol, drugs and health and wellbeing, challenges in the way data is measured and dual diagnosis of mental health and drug use.

County Lines
An article written by YPHP partner Addaction has been published in the Guardian looking at the ways young people are groomed into county lines drug dealing, how to spot the signs and the importance of recognising exploitation and early intervention.

To access all of the resources produced by YPHP and read more about our work, please visit our website. You can also follow us on twitter to find out more about current & future work and get involved.

Information Sharing

Workshops to help design a new toolkit to improve how Primary Care Networks engage with Inclusion Health groups will be held in London in January 2020. National LGB&T Partnership member, Stonewall Housing is facilitating these workshops with Friends, Families and Travellers, Homeless Link, National Ugly Mugs and Doctors of the World as part of the Health and Wellbeing Alliance’s Inclusion Health Sub Group.

Our partners at the Health & Wellbeing Alliance have been commissoned to investigate how to support people severely affected by mental illness to manage their weight and to give up smoking. A call for evidence for both programmes is currently open.

82% of women living with HIV in the UK are from BAME communities. A new short film made by BAME women shows how young people can take charge of their own sexual health.

The young people led campaign, Our Minds, Our Future are seeking anonomous contributions from young people of their experiences of the mental health system.

A blog written by Paula Lavis, policy manager at NHS Clinical Commissioner looks at how commitments in the NHS long term plan to services for 0-25 year olds will support transitions in mental health services.

Our Health & Wellbeing Alliance partner, the Race Equality Foundation are looking for a part time Policy & Practice Officer. Apply and come and work with us & other amazing VCSE partners on the Health & Wellbeing Alliance!

The Children's Commissioner's Whitehall Takeover Challenge will take place early next year. Care experienced young people aged between 14 and 25 are invited to apply to to take over key senior roles across Whitehall in February 2020.

A recent episode of the BBC Radio 1 podcast the Next Episode explored the experiences of young Gypsy, Traveller and Roma people at university and found that only 70 students identifying as Gypsy, Roma or Traveller were accepted into universities last year.

The Department of Health and Social Care’s voluntary sector team’s newsletter includes updates on the work of the Health and Wellbeing Alliance and news from the DHSC, NHS England and Public Health England. Sign up for the newsletter here.

About the Health and Wellbeing Alliance

The VCSE Health and Wellbeing Alliance creates a bridge between the voluntary sector and the health and care system, to help promote equality and reduce health inequalities.

Individuals and VCSE organisations who would like to share their experiences and ideas with NHS England, Department of Health and Social Care and Public Health England can do so via HW Alliance Members. If you would like to share insights or issues or get more information, please get in touch.

The Young People's Health Partnership is led by the Association for Young People's Health working together with Addaction, Brook, StreetGames, UK Youth and Youth Access.

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