Within the NHS there is a major challenge to shift from a predominantly reactive healthcare system to one that proactively invests in programmes and initiatives that create long-term results.
Simultaneously, in schools, good health and wellbeing among young people is critical in ensuring their academic and personal success.
Given that both NHS and school trusts play a vital civic role as anchor institutions in their communities, there is an opportunity for place-based partnerships between the two in order to implement proactive health measures to support young people and their communities.
NHS and school trusts in partnership
Our trust has established such partnerships with several NHS trusts in the same locations as our 15 schools, to bring about change across three key strands:
- Preventing health issues among young people.
- Establishing community health provisions on school sites.
- Developing the future NHS workforce.
This relationship began with a meeting between our CEO and the CEO of a group of four NHS trusts, which took place following an introduction from a trustee sitting on both our school trust and an NHS trust board.
Conversations initially focused on seeking to understand more about each other’s sectors and knowledge-sharing in areas such as strategy, financial sustainability and governance.
Quickly we saw that there was the potential to co-create a future together that supports the health and wellbeing of young people and communities.
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However, because the geographical coverage of our schools and the NHS trusts were not aligned, we sought further introductions to expand this work. Leaders met to agree initiatives and how to take them forward.
The capacity to drive these partnerships has been built into the role of one of our executive team members - Claire Gething (co-author of this article) - while headteachers and civic leads in each school provide further capacity to deliver activities at a local level
So what sort of things have we been doing in these partnerships?
Windsor Olympus Academy partnered with Sandwell and West Birmingham Hospitals NHS Trust to establish asthma-friendly environments in school.
Students are now trained as “Asthma Champions” to educate local primary schools about asthma triggers and treatment, and we have a longer-term aim of hosting an inoculation programme for people with asthma at the school.
We have also held community workshops with the NHS in school around topics such as healthy eating and the menopause. Now we are exploring partnerships with local doctors’ surgeries to offer a centralised health agreement for the community.
In another project, an NHS professionals careers fair was hosted at Windsor Olympus Academy to support the ambition to diversify the NHS workforce by bringing together healthcare professionals to inspire students and parents to consider a career in healthcare.
Furthermore, 50 of our students visited Birmingham Children’s Hospital to spend the morning touring the wards, meeting staff and learning about the range of different job roles within the NHS.
We are also particularly proud to have been invited by the acting chief medical officer at Birmingham and Solihull Integrated Care System to be part of an initiative bringing health professionals and educators from across the city together with the aim of reducing health inequalities among young people.
Meanwhile, three of our secondary schools in North Staffordshire are working with the NHS’ mental health support team to provide mental health education to students, wellbeing workshops for our staff and information evenings for parents to create a whole-school approach to mental health.
In addition, we are working with the NHS’ workforce development team in Stoke and North Staffordshire to develop a primary school careers pilot, which is being informed through pupil voice. This pilot looks at the many different roles within the NHS - clinical and non-clinical - with the content appropriately tailored for early years through to key stage 2.
Once developed, this will be trialled in our Stoke primaries before being rolled out to all primaries across the county.
Finally, in Walsall we are working closely with the public health team to host a new NHS community healthy eating programme from our primary schools. This partnership also provides pop-up immunisation clinics and an emotional health and wellbeing pilot aimed at primary school-aged children.
Long-term impact
Overall, school trusts and NHS trusts both play a vital role as anchor institutions in the communities they serve, with the potential to create long-term, sustainable impact.
As such, collaboration offers a powerful opportunity to work together and deliver projects to improve young people’s overall wellbeing and the health and educational future of their communities.
Dawn Haywood is chief executive officer of Windsor Academy Trust
Claire Gething is an executive leader at Windsor Academy Trust
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