Transcript

Jackie Musgrave:

Hello. I’m Jackie Musgrave, and I’m one of the co-authors of this course. Even though I’ve been in education for many years, I still align with being a nurse, and specifically with being a sick children’s nurse. I did two months placement at a paediatric hospital as part of my general training, and I met many children who spent huge chunks of time in the hospital, often on their own, sometimes in pain, away from their family, and they were often very bored.

I often used to wonder what the impact was on them in the long term. I only have to listen to a song from that era to be transported back, remembering all of those children. This experience made me develop a lifelong interest in children’s health and well-being. And then when I moved into education, I was asked to teach a child health module.

This was with experienced practitioners who were doing their foundation degree. And they had developed ways that made the environment as inclusive as possible for children with chronic health conditions, such as diabetes, asthma or eczema. I learned so much from them, and as a consequence, I chose the area of looking at how they supported children’s health for my doctoral research.

Children's health is not as good as it could be or as good as they deserve. They have a right to good health. And it is up to the adults in their lives to do what they can to promote good health for children.

This course brings together contemporary research and current knowledge about children’s health, and it is aimed at parents, professionals and educators. There are eight sessions in this course, and they’re approximately three hours each. We have commissioned original audio and visual resources to capture the wisdom of practitioners and other professionals who work in children’s services.

There are activities that will help to deepen your knowledge and encourage you to consider how you can support children’s health. We consider the needs of all children, babies, young children, those with disabilities, those with chronic ongoing conditions.

In Session 1 we set the scene by looking at what we mean by health. You'll meet Oscar, an eight-year-old, who will describe what health means to him.

In Session 2, we'll look at the historical perspective of child health, because it's really important to understand where we were in order to understand why we are where we are now.

In Session 3, we'll look at health promotion in relation to babies and young children.

And in Session 4, we'll look in greater depth at communicable and non-communicable conditions that are preventable.

And in Session 5, we'll examine policy and initiatives that can promote and support children's health, not just from England, from around the four countries of the UK, and also across the world.

Session 6 will focus on child health promotion, and we'll be looking at the toolkit and how this can help to promote children's health.

Session 7 will look at specific ways of working with parents and professionals.

And the final session will look at challenges and solutions.

The course will give you knowledge and resources to help you work towards ways of supporting and promoting children's health.

Thank you very much for registering for the course, and I hope you enjoy it.