The Healthaware Challenge is a 3 year project funded by the Department of Health to encourage young people to participate in and develop their own health and wellbeing projects, for example:
- delivering peer education sessions on healthy eating
researching sexual health information from the internet developing information on safety tips for other young people designing and completing health questionnaires etc. Because of its exciting new approach, young people engage first hand with the challenge of how to change people’s attitudes and behaviour for themselves and learn key skills along the way.
In its own right, the Healthaware Challenge is an innovative way for workers from a wide range of disciplines to access support and resources for developing their health and wellbeing work with young people.
The project is comprised of several key strands:
Regional events – these took place between February and March 2009. The evaluation report of these events will be uploaded shortly.
A Healthaware toolkit for workers – a resource designed to support workers to develop health and wellbeing activities with young people which includes sample challenges and activities as well as recording sheets and signposting for further information.
Promotional badges - to help engage young people and generate discussion around key health and wellbeing themes.
Showcase events – in Spring 2010 we will be hosting 3 regional events to celebrate the achievements of young people in the field of health and wellbeing activities. Further information about these will be available nearer the date.
Young people’s certificates - Young people who complete one or more Health and Wellbeing Activities as part of a registered group will receive a ‘Healthaware Activity’ certificate recognising their involvement. The Healthaware Activity certificates can recognise any health and wellbeing work you undertake with your young people and can, of course, be linked to the wide range of ideas in the toolkit. In addition to helping to motivate and recognise young people, these certificates can assist your organisation to record and evidence your involvement in the field of health and wellbeing.To download a certificate claim form, please click here
Reduced price accreditation - new groups can register to accredit their health and wellbeing activities with young people. This offer includes 2 half price multiagency training places on YC/YAA introductory training, half price registration until March 2010 as well as 30 half price Award booklets. This equates to a potential saving of over £550 and is only made possible by Funding from the Department of Health. Please note that this is only available to new groups, not those already registered, or who have previously been registered, to deliver the YAA. To find out more about YAA registration through the Healthaware Challenge please contact yaa@ukyouth.org
Interested?
Any interested group can simply register to be part of the Healthaware Challenge. As a registered group you will be sent a free copy of the toolkit, 20 promotional badges to help engage your young people in the programme, and you will be kept informed of the latest project developments. A registration form is available to download here
All Healthaware Challenge groups will be asked to produce a short (ie one page) report back on the health and wellbeing activities that they deliver with their young people in order to assist us in reporting back to the Department of Health. Workers have consistently said that they are lacking in quality resources to support their health and wellbeing work so we have put together an exclusive ‘thank you’ package for any group which reports back to us on their work with 5 or more young people (subject to demand). A reporting form can be downloaded here
