Children health behaviour engagement

One of Healthwatch Herefordshire’s top three priorities for 2018-19 is children and young People’s mental health. Healthwatch Herefordshire’s crucial crew work forms part of our engagement towards this priority. Crucial Crew is a schools safety day coordinated by the west Mercia police every year for all year six children in the county. Crucial Crew runs for two weeks allowing all the children in their last year of primary school a chance to attend for a day and take part in all ten workshops. This is a total of 1,770 10-11 year olds across Herefordshire.

The findings suggested less than half of the children were aware of minor injuries units and what to use them for, particularly schools in the city. The children who live in the city are most likely to use A&E as there is no minor injuries unit in Hereford. Some of the issues like seizures, chest pain, breathing issues and choking needed more explanation every time we carried out the workshop as children didn’t recognise the serious nature of the emergency situations. When talking through this exercise with the children, some schools had provided first aid training to the children but many hadn’t. Many children said they would use NHS111 for various things, including being unsure what was wrong or what to do.

The recommendation within the report inform more first aid training in schools, recognising emergency situations e.g. seizures, chest pain, severe blood loss, breathing issues and choking. It was apparent children didn’t realise how dangerous these situations could be. Raise awareness in schools of NHS Choices guidance.