Schools & Partners Conference 2024 - video
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Watch the full Schools & Partners conference here
The importance of partnership and good communication between schools and services were just a couple of themes that emerged from our virtual schools and partners conference 2024.
This year’s schools and partner conference, hosted by our Tower Hamlets GP Care Group School Health and Wellbeing Service, took place on 28 February. A good mix of partners attended the virtual conference, including headteachers, key school colleagues, health leaders and other colleagues from GP Care Group partner agencies.
The busy programme kicked off with Tower Hamlets Associate Director of Public Health for Children & Families, Katie Cole, opening the conference by welcoming everyone and presenting the borough’s new Partnership Strategy, ‘Accelerate’.
A variety of speakers spoke to participants about a diverse range of topics. Programme Lead for School Health Transformation, Sumaira Tayyab, and Children and Young People (C&YP) Programme Lead, Phoebe Kalunghi, covered the new C&YP Health & Wellbeing Service, the food in schools’ programme and immunisations. Asthma Specialist, Tori Hadaway, explored Asthma plans in schools, Safe East’s Anthony James talked about Tobacco Control Strategy and Vaping and there was a session on Testicular health in young men delivered by Vicky Stubb.
Two breakout rooms enabled participants to discuss ‘hot’ topics. The first explored, in more depth, the issues around supporting schools for dealing with vaping and smoking, and the second was on how to embed emotional wellbeing throughout personal, social, health and economic education (PHSE) lessons. Both sessions raised some challenges and identified some solutions to move forward.
Geraldine Collins, School Health and Wellbeing Service Lead said: “Feedback shows that participants found it to be a useful and informative event.
“Some of the clear themes that emerged from the conference touched on the importance of partnership working and how to improve communication between services and schools.
“I want to express my thanks for the smooth running of the event to Saheem from the CEPN (Tower Hamlets Training team), the expert speakers who presented on topical subjects and participants who engaged enthusiastically with discussions.”
For Tower Hamlets Education Wellbeing Service (THEWS) to identify how they can use existing school staff to embed emotional wellbeing into all PSHE lessons and to look a little bit more widely at the parent workshops and structure them in a way that supports positive mental health to be advertised and celebrated with parents.
Visibility: For all partners in schools to be recognised as being a part of the school community and communicate a shared language about emotional literacy within schools.
For information on smoking and vaping to be part of early intervention health promotion in primary schools enabling this knowledge to be built on over the child’s school years.
For the medical tracker that is in procurement by Public Health to be rolled out across the schools with training to go live on 1 August 2024.
Watch the full Schools & Partners conference here