Children and young people

Our vision for our Healthy Children and Families Priority is to ensure that children and young people have the best start to life and that we can enable them to be ‘happy, healthy at home’.

Our team is guided by the following ways of working:

  • Co-production should be at the heart of our work and our approach. We are led by a strong focus on working with children, young people and families and involving them as much as possible in designing services.
  • A strong focus on outcomes for children and young people ensuring that there is equitable access to education for all and that they feel safe and protected.
  • Everything we do should be aligned to the children and young people’s strategy for the local authorities in our place – City of Bradford Metropolitan District Council and North Yorkshire Council (in relation to the Craven district)
  • We have a strong focus on prevention and early help.
  • We work closely with colleagues in other sectors, most notably those working in mental health, learning disabilities, neurodiversity, public health, primary care, the voluntary, charity and social enterprise sector (VCSE) and early help / prevention – locally and across West Yorkshire.
  • Access to a strong research base in our region informs our work.
  • Making 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 children and young people aged 0-25 who have Special Educational Needs and / or Disabilities (SEND).

We continue to work on providing support sooner to children and young people (we describe this as early help 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 neurodivergence. We have an ambition to create a Neurodiverse Friendly District.

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

Our purpose

Our purpose for our Healthy Children and Families Priority is to ensure that children have the best start to life and that we can enable them to be ‘happy, healthy at home’.

Our population

We are proud that Bradford is the youngest city in Europe and we recognise the positive contribution that children and young people make to create a dynamic and ambitious district.

We do however 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. For example, there were 44.2% of children in Bradford living in a low income family in 2024, compared to 34.2% in 2015 (Gov.uk data – Children in low income families: local area statistics 2014 to 2024).

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 more child and young person 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.

Here is some more information about our programmes of work: