Health & Wellbeing in Integrated Learning Communities

Part of my work at the moment is developing a ‘Lifestyle Survey’ in Highland in order to monitor our progress in Health and Wellbeing and our Children’s Plan. The final product will be a bi-annual survey for P7, S2 and S4 young people. Some national surveys we have been asked to conduct in our classrooms e.g. SALSUS focus on negative behaviour rather than lifestyles in general. I really wonder how young people feel about being asked about these things rather than what they positively do, enjoy and take heart in.

The current national paper-based questionnaires seem to ’glean’ information from our pupils and certainly don’t employ any ‘active learning methods’ and to be honest, what do young people get out of it? So how does our Highland survey differ?

The lifestyle survey in Highland has been developed to be a supportive learning process, rather than ‘gleaning’ data. So this is how we hope it will go…Firstly through a class-based session, the teacher will explain the purposes for needing information and the importance of health and a sense of wellbeing. Pupils will keep a diary for a week, which is completely private, recording aspects of lifestyle. After the week is up each pupil will complete an anonymous online survey which provides a snapshot of their lifestyle in that past week based on their diaries. After-care is provided, support will be there for anyone wishing to discuss any aspects of the survey. A multi-agency approach will be adopted involving school staff, School Nurses, Youth Workers, Active School Co-ordinators etc and signposts to web links.

The questions in the 10-minute online survey cover many aspects of lifestyle. The pilot we recently carried out with 6 schools showed how crucial it is to ensure the questions are posed accurately. I can’t reveal the results of the pilot as it was a fairly small sample but it did make us significantly change the questions.

I’m particularly interested to see our results in the category of ‘communication’ which covers internet access and usage. We are mirroring the national data collected by CEOP regarding SNS sites etc, so it will be great to have our on Highland perspective, it will also be incredibly useful in informing our new E-safety Steering Group.

The techy bit!

A website has been purchased to host the online survey in Highland, password protected of course. The survey uses limesurvey software. We chose limesurvey as you can have unlimited amount of participants and the data will be able to be transported to SPSS and MS Excel, it’s also free of charge and developed by research specialists who are constantly looking to refine their software by offering it as shareware. After having a scoot around with my colleague Andy McNeil at all the different types of survey software we really found this to be the best one to use.

As soon as we conduct our survey I’ll  post the results, but for now, please see some excellent research conducted by the threebillion project, it really puts thing in a global perspective.

Thanks to Jim for linking me the threebillion.com project and their video on youtube

Pic - Kilchoan Primary School on Sanna Beach

These good guys did, well at very least played a major part in it! This is the team from the Scottish Health Promoting Schools Unit, who today were truly and heartily thanked for all their work since the unit was born in 2003. L to R, Mary Bellizzi, NDO Eating for Health, Jo Kopela, NDO Mental Health & Wellbeing, Benny Lawrie, NDO Physical Activity, Wendy Halliday, Director and Rosemary Arnott, Administrator to the Unit.

The national network meeting was organised to celebrate the work of the unit and others as they now move into the new Health and Wellbeing team at Learning and Teaching Scotland. Their largely unrecognised work has been to act as ‘facilitators’, agents of change and leaders, bringing different groups and networks together to maximise each others resources to ensure health and wellbeing is embedded as all our core business. The day was a great blend of national updates from Wendy Halliday and Bill Boyd Programme Manager LTS, followed by presentations from South Lanarkshire, Argyll & Bute and Dumfries & Galloway, whose schemes have taken different approaches to mainstreaming Health and Wellbeing, all very credible and innovative approaches.

The national updates pretty much focused on the guidance for the new School Act and the forthcoming Health and Wellbeing outcomes for CfE all to be published in May 2008. So far, my understanding, is they will be grouped as follows:

• A covering paper regarding PSE moving into cross-curricular approaches
• Mental, Emotional and Social wellbeing
• Physical Activity, Physical Education and Sport
• Pathways
• Food and Health
• Substance Misuse
• Relationships, Sexual Health and Parenting

All very exciting developments. I raised the views earlier expressed in my posts here regarding the Literacy outcomes and the need to incorporate ‘Internet Safety’ in any Health and Wellbeing guidance and outcomes and it was confirmed that this would be included in a Communications cross-cutting theme.

The day was concluded by a brilliant (noisy!) performance from the Cleveland Taiko Drummers, which prompted complaints from the Hilton hotel, but, the mood was, so what?!! It was a rivetting performance from a very talented group of young people.  A further very special thank you followed by presentations and a speech from the network. I for one, am so grateful for the support of the unit and I know my national colleagues are too, they really have gone a long way to put health at the heart of learning.