Bristol’s Emotional Health and Wellbeing Strategy for Children and Young People 2009-14

A Comprehensive Multi-Agency Approach to Children and Young People’s Emotional Health and Wellbeing

Poor emotional health has an impact on physical health, educational achievement, employment, parenting, relationships, smoking, substance misuse, unwanted pregnancy, and crime. It is key to the future life chances of children and young people.

The aim of this strategy is to coordinate the planning and commissioning of services to ensure that the resources of all agencies are used in the most effective way possible to improve the emotional health of children and young people in Bristol.

During 2008-9 a multi agency stakeholder group  

• agreed Aim, Objectives & Principles, after consultation.
• consulted with young people, parents & staff and identified gaps.
• analysed needs & related plans.
• considered research & good practice.

We used all this information to develop a picture of what needs to be in place to improve children’s emotional health & wellbeing, and who the relevant commissioners are for each piece of this jigsaw.

Resources produced in the process of developing the strategy that may be of interest / useful to schools and others

Paper 1:  Agreed aims, objectives and principles of the strategy. Needs in Bristol – statistical data, views of children, young people, and parents, views of multi agency staff, and gaps identified.  The direction of national policy, and local policies and plans.

Paper 2: research findings relevant to children’s emotional health and wellbeing

Paper 3: examples of projects that have been found to improve the emotional health of children & young people.  Some of the evaluations were independent, and some based on routine outcomes data collection. Many of the examples are based in schools, and it may be that this paper could be helpful for schools considering strategies for EH and WB.