It was a case of winning hearts and minds this week, with activities both inside and outside of LifeLab making a real difference in our ambition to improve population health through education and discovery.
Our programme leader Kathryn Woods-Townsend was part of a lively session at Westminster which saw many of the sides involved in the UK’s ongoing battle with obesity, come together under one roof, while the end of the week saw her discussing the importance of physical activity in schools, more of that later.
Some of our LifeLab team were also on hand at the University of Southampton where Amanda Spielman, Ofsted Chief Inspector, was giving the Southampton Education School’s Annual Lecture in which she was discussing the route to a new inspection framework for Ofsted and the need to ensure that children have access to a broad curriculum.
Although the inspection framework is still being drafted before consultation, one of the changes is likely to be a splitting of the current judgement of personal development, behaviour and welfare into two separate judgements. One for behaviour and attitudes and one for personal development, the signs being that this judgement will have a strong emphasis on physical and mental health of students which really ties in with the work LifeLab can deliver in partnership with schools.
This separation of ‘personal’ and ‘behaviour’ is an encouraging sign that what schools do to enhance the wellbeing of young people will be valued and recognised by inspectors in the new framework.
The incoming Ofsted inspection framework was also one of the hot topics of conversation at a meeting of the ukactive Kids Council, of which Dr Woods-Townsend is a member. The panel gathered earlier today to talk about setting priorities following the successful summit last month and the publication of the Generation Inactive 2 report. The publication set out the need for organisations, government and health bodies to unite behind efforts to tackle growing inactivity, and rising obesity levels the population.
Lives, or more specifically hearts, also benefited from CPR training given to visiting students from The Romsey School who took part under the watchful eye of the University Hospital Southampton resuscitation team.
Part of the experience of a normal day in LifeLab does involve learning CPR, a part of our programme funded by the British Heart Foundation, so that more young people have the confidence to step in if an emergency arises.
This Tuesday coincided with Restart a Heart Day so the training moved to the front entrance of Southampton General Hospital as part of a public engagement event.
Feedback from the students was fantastic. Gareth, 15, said: “It is a really important skill to learn and I know feel confident that I could help. Classmate Orlando, 15, agreed: “If you were faced with this situation previously I would have had to leave it to someone else, but now I feel I could help.”
Meanwhile, the Westminster Food and Nutrition Forum was the place to be on Wednesday. It made a big difference to be involved in a discussion around obesity where lots of different interests were represented. These included food industry, legal services, and advertising standards agency along with schools, academics and health bodies.
In summary, Dr Woods-Townsend said: “My overall feeling was that it was great to have differing viewpoints in the room talking to each other, trying to understand the different pressures on key stakeholders and recognising that there isn’t a silver bullet that will fix the obesity issue. We all have to come up with a range of solutions, each one of which will have a small impact but together could make a difference.”
LifeLab can certainly be part of that solution.
