Children’s Plan: A plan for radically improving children’s wellbeing, health and care
Prioritising children’s health, well-being, and care is both a moral responsibility and a vital investment in the future. Today’s young people are tomorrow’s leaders, innovators, and caregivers. By nurturing their growth, we help build a compassionate, resilient, and just society.
Addressing children’s health and care needs at the earliest opportunity lays the foundation for a healthier, more prosperous community, creating lasting, positive change.
The Humber and North Yorkshire Integrated Care Partnership is bringing together families, schools, healthcare providers, and communities to improve experiences and outcomes for every child.
Our strategy
Our refreshed strategy reflects our learning, setting out a renewed commitment to our partnership ambitions by:
- introducing a new ‘golden ambition’ to drive a generational change in wellbeing, health and care for today’s children
- reaffirming our commitment to what is already working well, such as our person-centred and strengths-based approach
- setting out areas for investment that will keep the voices of the people at the heart of everything we do, and that will drive excellence, prevention and sustainability across our system.
Our strategy provides the guiding light for the Humber and North Yorkshire Health and Care Partnership, so that we remain focused and ambitious for all of the people we serve. You can read the full strategy here.
Our strategy on a page
Humber and North Yorkshire Partnership: The golden ambition
The golden ambition to radically improve children’s wellbeing, health and care is at the heart of the
Humber and North Yorkshire Integrated Care Partnership Strategy reflecting our commitment to making
a difference for our future generations. Across our Places (Hull, East Riding, North Lincolnshire, North-East Lincolnshire, North Yorkshire, and York), there is a shared commitment to improving children’s experiences and outcomes.
Local plans focus on prevention, early help, identification and need, and safeguarding to keep children safe, healthy, and ready for school and life. They also aim to reduce inequalities and support vulnerable children, ensuring they thrive in their families, schools, and communities.
The Mental Health, Learning Disability and Autism Collaborative programme is also working to improve support for children and young people.
The Children’s Plan enhances these efforts by strengthening partnerships, enabling transformation, driving culture change, and directing resources where they are needed most. Together, we are creating a more unified support system that meets children’s needs.
Outcomes
Children are safe:
Children will be safe from harm and are supported and protected in their families and communities.
Children will be safe from harm and supported in their families and communities.
We will protect at-risk children and families, ensuring vulnerable children experience stable, loving homes to become healthy and resilient adults.
Our key priorities include enhancing multi-agency safeguarding arrangements, reducing the requirement for residential placements, and improving coordinated mental health crisis care.
• Enhancing multi agency safeguarding arrangements
• Reducing the requirement for residential placements
• Improving coordinated approach to mental health crisis care
Children are healthy:
Children and young people will have healthier lifestyles with better physical and mental health.
We will invest in the well-being of children and young people from pregnancy through to young adulthood, promoting healthier lifestyles and better physical and mental health.
Our key priority actions include tackling asthma, improving oral health, enhancing preconception, maternity and neonatal services, promoting healthy weight and lifestyle, strengthening the healthy child programme (0-19), enabling wellbeing and meeting mental health need early, and improving
access to mental health services.
• Tackling asthma
• Improving oral health
• Improving preconception, maternity and neonatal services
• Promoting healthy weight and lifestyle
• Enhancing the healthy child programme
(0-19)
• Enabling wellbeing and meeting mental health need early
• Improving access to mental health services
Children are thriving:
Children and young people will flourish in environments that support their growth and development and be encouraged to reach their full potential.
hildren and young people will flourish in supportive environments, reaching their full potential. We will improve early childhood experiences, school readiness and attendance, engagement, and achievement, and ensure care-experienced children and care leavers thrive. We will inspire young people to pursue health and care careers within HNY.
Our priority actions include improving early speech and language, ensuring access to timely therapeutic services, enabling participation for children with neurodiversity and/or SEND, enhancing our offer for care leavers, preparing young people for purposeful adulthood, and improving access to health and care careers.
• Improving early speech and language
• Ensuring access to timely therapeutic services
• Enabling participation for children with neurodiversity and/or SEND
• Enhancing our offer for care leavers
• Preparing young people for purposeful adulthood
• Improving access to health and care careers
Partnership principles
We are committed to creating meaningful, transformative change for our children and young people. To go beyond simply improving our current system, we must embrace a fundamental shift in both culture and approach. The following principles guide our behaviours and decision-making.
Our child centred approach
Taking the concept of ‘think person, think family think community’ we will adopt a child-centred approach by placing the rights, unique needs, strengths and voices of children and their caregivers at the heart of all decisions and actions.
This involves equipping teams to focus on the holistic development of children and ensuring their experiences and realities are reflected in plans, and policies.
Amplify Voices & Empower Young People
Ensuring children and young people actively participate in their care and decisions that affect them. By truly listening to their voices, especially those facing inequalities, we are creating solutions that truly meet their needs. We are equipping children and young people with knowledge and skills to make informed health choices, fostering confidence and self-advocacy.
Champion Child-Friendly, Individualised Support
Using IThrive and trauma-informed practices, we are providing sensitive, comprehensive care that supports physical, emotional, and social
well-being. Our strength-based approach builds resilience, avoids labels, upholds rights, and recognises each child’s unique potential.
Engage Support Networks
Families, caregivers, and communities play a key role in a child’s well-being. We are fostering strong partnerships to ensure a holistic approach, addressing emotional, social, and developmental well-being.
Ensure Consistency in Care
Stable, continuous care is essential for long-term well-being. We focus on smooth transitions between different stages of care, ensuring ongoing support for healthy development.
Prevention and early intervention
Developing a population health management focus for children and young people, we will identify and provide effective support to children and young people at risk of poor outcomes preventing problems from occurring or addressing them early before they worsen.
Health Awareness and Self-Care
By developing and implementing engaging programmes in schools and communities we are fostering healthy habits, mental well-being, and self-care.
Early Screening and Assessment
Through screening and assessment we are identifying potential health and developmental issues early for timely intervention.
Parental and Caregiver Support
By coordinating our services, we are providing families with resources about healthy lifestyle choices and opportunities, while also strengthening interventions that support positive parenting and enhance family dynamics. Additionally, we are developing approaches that enhance the resilience of children and families, helping them cope with challenges.
Vaccination and Immunisation Programmes
We are encouraging more families to participate in immunisation and vaccination programmes, ultimately protecting the health of children from preventable disease.
One system for children
By creating a cohesive system for children, we will integrate health, education, and social care services to provide a seamless and coordinated approach to care and development.
System Leadership
As leaders, we are collaborating to drive transformative change across the
entire system.
Local support
We are giving more control to local areas to make better decisions on how best to meet need. Through Family Hubs and Integrated Neighbourhood Teams, we are developing approaches that target resources for children and families at risk of the poorest outcomes, working as a network of services to make every contact count.
Holistic services
By developing services that focus on need at the lowest level, we are reducing
handoffs and referrals and offering the right level of help, by the right professional,
at the right time, to support families to build resilience
and independence.
Supporting schools and other education settings
Working in partnership, we are enabling schools and other settings to play a pivotal role in improving all children’s safety, physical and mental health, including those with special education needs and/or disabilities.
Empowered Staff
We are investing in ongoing training and development to enhance staff skills and knowledge across the system enabling them to do what’s best for each child.
Our partnership enablers
We recognise that we need to act differently together to strengthen and accelerate the focus on prevention and early identification. We will strengthen our system approach to develop more collaborative approaches around:
Our delivery plan
he Start Well Board ensures a shared system oversight.; mobilising resources, raising awareness, and fostering collaboration to drive transformative change for children and young people. The governance framework is a flexible and live document that is regularly reviewed, with a formal annual update to stay relevant to evolving priorities.
Through the Start Well partnership, we will strengthen system leadership in health and care by:
• Encouraging mutual accountability, trust, and innovation.
• Applying systems thinking to understand healthcare interactions.
• Fostering continuous learning and adaptability.
• Integrating emotional intelligence into leadership.
• Promoting interdisciplinary collaboration.
• Using Decision Quality and Shining a Light methodologies to inform strategic choices.
Single page downloadable documents and referencing materials
Golden ambition on a page. Additional Golden ambition in depth information
Publication: A plan for radically improving children’s wellbeing, health and care