Never before has wellbeing been more important than in 2020 – a year which continues to deliver challenges across all facets of our community.

Improving the wellbeing of children and young people is an important part of the Government’s Child and Youth Wellbeing strategy, and an important focus of Healthy Active Learning. Sport Waitākere’s Healthy Active Learning Advisors have been supporting schools in developing school wide wellbeing strategic plans.

Healthy Active Learning Advisor, Katie Dobson, says the umbrella of wellbeing support has extended to reviewing each school’s systems, policies and practices that contribute or hinder staff and students’ wellbeing.

“At Avondale Primary and Avondale Intermediate, for example, we saw a need to gain more insights from the students and as a result, started up a student wellbeing group. We meet every fortnight to discuss topics related to wellbeing and have also started to teach them about Hauora, using the Whare Tapa Whā framework.”

This work is particularly relevant at this time says Katie, especially in light of the recently released national results of the Youth19 Survey – the latest in the Youth2000 series of health and wellbeing surveys.

“One of the things that came from the Youth19 survey was that young people want adults to listen to them, to try to understand their point of view and to involve them in decisions affecting their future. They want to be heard and taken seriously at home, at school and across the country. There were strong requests for young people’s views to be sought, valued and acted upon.”

Katie says the Avondale Primary and Intermediate students were extremely receptive and keen to contribute their ideas to their school’s ongoing wellbeing approach.

“The students have moved on to now identifying areas that could be improved within the wider school, which will lead ultimately to implementing wellbeing initiatives across the school and even extending into the local community.”

Avondale Primary and Avondale Intermediate are two of 20 schools in West Auckland selected as a Healthy Active Learning School. Healthy Active Learning is about supporting schools, kura and early learning settings to improve child and youth wellbeing through healthy eating and drinking, and quality physical activity. It is a joint initiative from the Ministry of Health, Ministry of Education and Sport New Zealand and provides schools and early learning settings with new resources ranging from new guidelines to health promotion staff and physical activity advisors.

Article added: Wednesday 25 November 2020