Children and Young People

Strategic Priority

Children and Young People

With a clear focus and priority on raising the number of children’s positive attitudes towards physical activity, Active Essex are making progress to ensure every child has the best start in life, whereby they are active, healthy and happy.

Contributing to the Essex system’s Fit for the Future strategy, Active Essex’s focus on children and young people has seen a positive increase in the number participating in activity. This year the prime focus has been on creating positive experiences for young people to participate in physical activity and sport.

51.5%

children in Greater Essex are active

1.9%

increase in children classed as active

2.5%

decrease in less active children in Greater Essex

Priorities for this strategic priority this year:

Resilient children and young people
Providing fun, safe, inclusive and positive experiences of physical activity
Inclusive and supportive schools and communities
Stable and thriving families
Safe and accessible neighbourhoods

Resilient children and young people

With the Paris Olympics and Paralympics taking place during this financial year, it provided a fantastic opportunity to inspire young people to take part in physical activity and sport. Insightful information that was provided through the #MoveWithUs focus groups helped Active Essex understand that young people enjoy having role models to look up to, and the events taking place in Paris during Summer 2024, helped provide these in abundance.

The Path to Paris opportunity, saw athletes Siobhan Fitzpatrick attend the Invincible Games, trying out different events to her normal Wheelchair Basketball, as well as GB Paralympic Swimmer Grace Harvey attend the launch of the Path to Paris series in Essex, at local school Treetops, Thurrock.

GB Athlete, Grace Harvey attends Treetops School to launch new initiative

The Legacy Leaders has been a consistent course to develop leadership skills for young people. In June 2024, work began on creating a #MoveWithUs structure, to support young people in all settings looking to develop skills.

This saw new resources designed, alongside a webpage to support the delivery of the training at the Summer Holiday Activity and Food (HAF) programme, followed by a launch to schools in November 2024.

secondary schools completed the Legacy Leaders course

221

young people have been trained

schools committed to support School Games County events

To ensure Essex has resilient children and young people, it is important to address the growing statistic around children’s mental health – that half of all adult mental health problems start by the age of 14, with a direct link between poor mental health and physical health. Early stages of the Active Essex Foundation Sport and Mental Health project is well underway, helping to build capacity and engaging with organisations and partners across the mental health system.

The team are currently in the process of identifying the need of mental health provision for young people to plan future delivery, supporting Mind with the development of the Safe and Effective Practice Framework for physical activity and mental health, designing the ‘Supporting Mental Health in Schools’ workshop, and more recently the ‘Transition Age Mental Health’ funding.

organisations deliver for the Sport and Youth Mental Health project

201

sessions have taken place to date

representatives received mental health training

Read more about providing positive experiences for young people

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Strengthening Communities

Essex ActivAte

The Holiday Activity and Food Programme for Essex and Thurrock

Inclusive and supportive schools and communities

A huge success came this year, when Active Essex and the School Games Organisers won Highly Commended at the national Barclays Girls award ceremony for the Strategic Lead category. The Barclays Girls FA programme has really taken off in Essex, continuing to inspire young females into football. 200+ schools will also now benefit from the Active Essex led Digital Partnership Barclays Girls Football this year.

In addition, Active In Mind (AIM) workshops led by Youth Sport Trust Athlete Mentors started in 5 secondary schools, with local organisations recruited to build upon this. The Children and Young People team continue to build strong relationship with AIM lead, who delivered a keynote and workshop at the 2024 PE Conference.

schools engaged in the ‘Active in Mind’ programme in Essex

school and local organisation relationships developed

local organisations delivering follow up sessions to 6 schools

Take a look at this years Invincible Games, in partnership with Multi-School Council and Get Set, Path to Paris.

Opportunities for students to engage in physical activity was in no short supply this year. The School Games Organiser (SGO) network worked hard, with Active Essex support, to deliver over 200 school games events, and 14 county level events, as well as tackling inequality specific projects.

The Essex School Games summer event, and Invincible Games took place again at Basildon Sporting Village, hosting GB athletes and several VIPs to highlight the success of these events in supporting young people to try different activities and ensure they are inclusive for all to take part in.

18,000

students took part in School Game events

148

events in total delivered by SGO network

£27,250

applied for, for 38 tackling inequalities projects

Healthy, happy and active children are more likely to achieve, and importantly, be ready and able to learn. There is strong evidence to suggest that physically active children achieve higher levels of academic attainment that their less physically active peers.

With this in mind, and as part of the Essex County Council transformation partnership, Active Essex is leading work to develop whole school approaches to healthy behaviours, enabling Essex schools to put movement at the heart of every school day. This is a multi-faceted programme, working at system level to align shared outcomes for children and young people, improve communication, and ensure the effective use of collective resources. The pilot programme will engage up to 30 schools, and focus on completion of a needs audit, leading to the creation of an action plan with support for change to create truly active schools across the county.

Over the past year we have made great strides to de-silo PE and School Sport and share the value of our sector’s unique ability to reach thousands of young people across the county. We have shared these learnings across the Children’s Partnership Boards, but in Essex, the infrastructure in place means many areas of the county miss out on new opportunities. A key part of our work with education settings, PE and School Sport infrastructure and partners, will look to address this into 2025 and beyond.

Lee Monk, Strategic Lead for Children and Young People

As well as the Olympics and Paralympic events that took place across the summer, Ford RideLondon-Essex took to the streets of Essex, again inspiring the next generation with fantastic role models.

In the lead up to the event, Active Essex were able to secure Katie Archibald to visit Active Travel funded school, Woodville Primary, who also hosted a cycling champion, who later took on the 100-mile RideLondon route.

school cycling champions took part in RideLondon-Essex

schools attended the elite women race on the Friday

Stable and thriving families

Active Essex place-based teams are becoming more and more involved in district Children’s Partnership Boards, helping influence the use of physical activity among key partners. A strong relationship with the Essex Child and Family Wellbeing service is developing conversations on 0-19 family hubs utilising sport and mental health programmes. Similarly, the Children and Young Person team have engaged in Early Help System Guide Workshops for the Supporting Families agenda, highlighting the power of sport and physical activity in creating healthy, active communities.

Relationships with Essex education providers has helped place these settings at the centre of communities for them to access physical activity opportunities, and Early Years practitioners have been onboarded to the Early Years Movement Mark. This was launched at the Essex County Council Early Years Conference. This ties in closely to the Early Years Charter, and the #MoveWithUs initiative.

Key learnings

Throughout this work, Active Essex have compiled a list of key learnings along the journey.

Confidence

Building confidence in non-sport workforce to facilitate families being active is essential.

Communication

Marketing must be tailored for key identified target audiences to engage with.

Local influence

Involvement on local Essex Children’s Partnership boards are key to influence movement.

Safe and accessible neighbourhoods

The spaces created for families and young people to get active in is crucial, especially when creating community cohesion and ensuring residents feel a sense of belonging.

School facilities are valuable community assets which provide a safe, familiar environment for many young people. Active Essex recognises the importance of utilising these resources effectively to benefit not only children and young people, and school staff, but the whole community.

Funded by the Department for Education, the Opening Schools Facilities programme was launched to support schools to open these facilities outside of school hours, providing additional opportunities for children and young people to be active. Across Greater Essex, Active Essex worked with 42 schools to enable this delivery to take place, with funding used in a variety of ways to maximise use of these fantastic spaces.