A North East charity is hoping to use £3m in funding with more than 80 schools in Northumberland and Tyne and Wear over the next three years to tackle the "crisis" hitting the mental and physical health of our children.
Rise - an Active Partnership - is to spend the money supporting schools to provide new activity projects, and to boost existing ones. The funding will be channelled towards our region's most deprived areas, and the woman leading the scheme is hopeful that the benefits will be felt far beyond the school gates.
This comes against a backdrop of record child poverty levels in the North East and when the region is constantly bottom of the table in a range of health metrics. We see the most suicide and self-harm and the worst rates of illnesses such as COPD.
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The funding, supplied by the Department for Education, has previously seen programmes like "Boogie Bounce" classes involving trampolining at the start of the school day funded at Parkhead Community Primary in Winlaton. The idea is to boost children's menta heath - and Louise Laws from Rise explained it has been expanded to the wider community.
Louise, the strategic lead for children and young people's health and wellbeing at Rise, told ChronicleLive: "We have just over £3m to distribute. We are hoping to work with 82 schools, and in our first year we have 52. That's across Northumberland, Tyne and Wear.
"The target groups are very much SEND children, young people, and women and girls. It is something that adds value and complements the wider school communities."
Louise said she was delighted by the funding Rise is able to distribute - schools are able to put in applications to her team. She added: "This is a game-changing sum of money for our schools at a time when it is needed more than ever. Schools play a vital role in encouraging children and young people to be more active.
“It will particularly support those impacted by health, social or economic inequalities living in our most vulnerable communities across Tyne & Wear and Northumberland."
She added that the impact of health inequality and social deprivation on young people in parts of our region had never been more acute. She said: "We know the crisis we are facing when it comes to children and young people in our schools. They are less active now than they have been since the 1970s.
"And in our area we have among the worst rates of mental ill health, the highest levels of suicide and self-harm, the highest levels of eating disorders. We have to look to find ways to give our children and young people better opportunities. This funding can support schools to open up their facilities and how that can benefit their pupils, their parents and their wider communities."
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