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Priority: Children and Young People

The specific focus is on:

  • Giving children the best start in life and supporting them throughout their childhood
  • Putting children and young people at the heart of what we do

Key strategic actions under this priority are:

  • Take a ‘think family’ approach - work with and invest in families to achieve better outcomes for all.
  • Make it easy to access services - join up specialist services and make services easy to access for a range of needs, including a mix of digital and face-to-face support, adapting opening hours, and offering interpreting or translation services for those that need it.
  • Make it easy to access information - map what already exists and making it easy for everyone in Bexley to find information about what action they can take, and what help they can get, to live a healthy life.
  • Build community resilience - empower communities to stay well and safe in the community, underpinned by contextual safeguarding, offering training opportunities to communities to support each other, and building capacity within the voluntary, community, and social enterprise sector (VCSE).
  • Take a prevention and early intervention approach - invest in the early years and prevention across the life course, including preconception and becoming a parent, giving every child the best start in life 0 to 5 years, and childhood and adolescence 5 to 19 years (and up to 25 for those with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND)).
  • Target support at those that need it most to help tackle health inequalities - individuals, families and communities with the greatest need receive the support they require, including those with SEND.
  • Listen to children and young people - ensure that children and young people are at the heart of everything we do and giving children and young people the chance to tell us what they need.
  • Prepare young people for adulthood - ensure that young people in Bexley have great opportunities in education, employment, and training, and ensure a smooth transition between child and adult health and care services.

There are approximately 61,800 children and young people resident in Bexley (0- to 19-year-olds), and 75,265 if young people aged up to 24 years olds are included.1 Bexley children and young people are doing well, but there are some significant challenges locally and we want to work to reduce local health inequalities and empower Bexley children and young people to do even better.

Investing in the early years and children and young people is a key priority because inequalities in early life have lifelong impacts. Interventions to reduce these inequalities are most effective in the early years and childhood, and investing early will save costs in the long run to individuals and society.2 Locally, there are higher birth rates in the north of the borough where children are more likely to be affected by income deprivation, and we will ensure that all children in Bexley are given the best start in life.3

Giving every child the best start in life improves babies’ and children’s health outcomes including early cognitive and non-cognitive development, social development, children’s readiness for school and later educational outcomes.4 Continuing to support children and young people as they grow up, including achieving good educational attainment, making sure the environments they live in are safe and healthy, and reducing school exclusions and exposure to youth crime, has long-term benefits to children and young people’s outcomes, including health and wellbeing.5

If you want to find out more and for ideas about how you can support your baby’s or child’s development at home, and help them in being ready for school, visit our Born Ready, School Ready, Bexley Ready page.

Bexley children and young people performed above national averages in educational attainment across all age ranges over the last five years, including for our most disadvantage children and we have a high comparative proportion of young people in education, employment, or training.6 As highlighted above, overweight and obesity is a significant challenge for children and young people in Bexley, alongside wellbeing and mental health. Over the last few years and since the COVID-19 pandemic we have seen an increase in the number of and seriousness of mental health challenges that our children and young people are facing.7 These are key areas that we want to address through this strategy.

  1. Census 2021, ONS
  2. The Marmot Review 10 Years On
  3. Child and Maternal Health, OHID
  4. Health matters: giving every child the best start in life
  5. The Marmot Review 10 Years On
  6. Child and Maternal Health, OHID
  7. Ibid.