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Children and young people

Our vision for our children, young people and families priority is to ensure that people have the best start to life and that we can enable children to be ‘happy, healthy at home’. We are led by a strong focus on working with children, young people and families and involving them as much as possible in designing our services.

The principles below guide our work.

  • Co-production with children and families should be at the heart of our work and our approach.
  • Everything we do should be aligned to the children’s plan for the local authorities in our place – City of Bradford Metropolitan District Council and North Yorkshire Council (that covers the Craven district)
  • We have a strong focus on prevention.
  • We work closely with colleagues in other sectors, most notably those working in mental health, learning disabilities, neurodiversity, public health, prevention – locally and across West Yorkshire.
  • We involve and engage widely, this includes ensuring that schools, education and primary care are involved.
  • Access to a strong research base in our region informs our work
  • Make sure that the Craven district is a core part of the work, and that the specific and unique issues to Craven are understood and different approaches are taken to address them.
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Our work will ensure we focus on changing the way services are provided ranging from those that are available to all (universal services) through to specialist services such as those for people who have Special Education Needs and or Disabilities (SEND).

Through our 0-1001 days programme (previously known as better births) we will improve the experience and care of women and their families throughout pregnancy and after birth. This includes a focus on culturally appropriate perinatal mental health support.

We continue to work on providing support sooner to children and young people (we describe this as early intervention and prevention) so that we can enable a healthy start to life and continue this through and beyond education

We recognise the need to provide specialist care for people with Special Education Needs and or Disabilities (SEND) and need to address challenges so that we can provide quicker access to health assessments and care for neurodiversity. We have an ambition to create a neurodiverse friendly place.

For some children, young people and families we recognise the need for tailored, compassionate and person-centred care including those with the very most complex health and care needs such as those that require palliative care (end of life care) or those transitioning to adulthood and crisis care.

Our purpose

Our purpose for our children, young people and families priority is to ensure that people have the best start to life and that we can enable children to be ‘happy, healthy at home’. We are led by a strong focus on working with children, young people and families and involving them as much as possible in designing our services.

Our population

Our population we are proud that Bradford is the youngest city in Europe and recognise the positive contribution that children and young people make to create a dynamic and ambitious district. We do however recognise that we have a range of challenges to address from the rurality of Craven and the unique challenges presented as a result of this through to pockets of socio-economic deprivation that means that two in five children are living below the poverty line a figure that has risen by 2% in 2019-20 and 10% in past eight years. We have a shared commitment to making the district a great place to be a child and a young person. Our intention over the next five years is to work with our partners, led by Bradford Council, to become child friendly and a place where every child has the opportunity and support to reach their full potential.

Our partnership

Our partnership will guide the work of the priority and ensure that we all take responsibility for improving our services where we can, learning from findings of national reviews and bringing people on a journey with us and using people’s lived experience to shape our services. Through the work we are doing in partnership we will take an approach that starts at pre-conception, covers universal health services and prevention, focuses on key health pathways and understands more about how we can effectively deliver the best possible services for people with complex needs. To do this we need to work across health and care services and with other partners such as education, local employers and those involved in supporting people affected by adversity and trauma.

See the programmes of work in our priority area

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Best 1001 days

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Children and young people’s wellbeing