Contribution that Schools Can Make to Childrens Health and Well-Being - Essay Example

The Contribution that Schools Can Make to Children’s Health and Well Being Undoubtedly, health is something that can be developed by individuals in their everyday lives. Excessive consumption of fast food has increased among children and this in turn has led to the rising cases of obesity epidemic. Unhealthy eating habits among schoolchildren are common and so there is need to promote health practices in various schools. Arguably, the school is an important institution in individual lives as it helps in building educational outcomes and creates opportunities for health improvement of students to assist them to be active and participate accordingly in the society. Both the school and home are the major social environments for children. Exposure to caring and supportive environments and positive emotional attachments play a leading role in determining physical and mental health of children. Health promoting programs involves a broad health education curriculum that assists in creating a supportive environment for healthy development at schools. Schools should develop a whole school strategy to welfare promotion incorporating broad health education curriculum. More so, developing health promoting programs is very important in encouraging children to adopt health-improving behaviors and eliminate health compromising behaviors. Such programs assist in improving the establishment of school health initiatives resulting to changes in children’s health behaviors and enhance health promotion policies and practices in most schools. This paper provides a very critical discussion on how schools can contribute to the well-being and health of children. The term wellbeing refers to the quality of individuals’ lives based on household income, educational resources and health status among others (Statham and Chase 2010, p.2). Being healthy entails living a healthy lifestyle free from excessive consumption of fast foods and use of illicit drugs; and also being physically, mentally, emotionally, socially as well as sexually healthy. On the other hand, children’s wellbeing involves aspects such as engaging in further education; secure a job upon graduating, and access to basic needs among others. Within an international agenda and the UNICEF report, health and safety, material wellbeing, and family and peer relationships are some of the aspects in children’s welfare (Mcauley and Rose 2010, p.112; Watson 2012, p.80). Normally, schoolchildren are faced with health problems due to poor dietary behaviors like excessive intake of calories and inadequate consumption of healthy diet like fruits and vegetables. However, only few of them use dietary practices to help them lose weight and be fit. Childhood obesity is one of the major health problems today and so school nurses should aggressively address this issue by teaching and encouraging children on healthy eating habit (Aggleton, Dennison and Warwick 2010, p.155). Children from schools that developed or adopted health-promoting programs were better based on health risk behavior, health status as well as academic achievement. Some of the issues that have been established to help schools address particular health issues include health policy and services, personal health skills, and physical and social environments among others. The national healthy school program aims at creating policies and approaches promoting better health into everything offered by the school (Great Britain 2004, p.55). Children attending schools with high standards of health practices have improved lifestyle and better life satisfaction and emotional status. Furthermore, social development model assist in explaining the essence of health promoting practices in enhancing protective factors for children’s health and social behaviors. Schools may develop comprehensive health policies; promote staff health education training; ensure proper management of health education resources; and broadly covers health content in their health education curriculum. More so, schools should establish safe surrounding and build a healthy eating habit as a way of ensuring good health of all children. This is the best way to ensure that children’s health is protected and their well-being considered as well. A whole school approach to health helps in reducing health risk behaviors and improves children’s emotional wellbeing. Studies reveal that schools health promoting school approach effectively develop essential protective factors for children’s health and wellbeing. A whole school approach offers a more comprehensive mechanism in enhancing holistic health of children. This approach also improves the school’s health skills, and physical and social environments among others. More so, the use of a whole school approach in addressing health and social issues helps in improving learning outcomes because it enables children to have higher satisfaction life. Whole school approach in promoting individual’s wellbeing including giving children a voice to enable them share their opinions, partnering with parents and other interested parties, creating friendly school culture and environment, and also proving support services to children among others (NHSS n.d, p.10). Healthy schools strengthen their capability to create a healthy learning environment and this is possible by engaging health and education officials, teachers, parents and health providers in activities that make the school a healthy place. More so, health promoting schools can foster health and learning by all possible means, provide a healthy environment, school health education and services, health promotion programs for both staff and children, nutrition and safety programs. Again creating opportunities for physical education and recreation, counseling programs, and metal health promotions is necessary. Moreover, health-promoting schools focus on improving the health of school personnel, societal individuals and that of children. Furthermore, it is important to implement policies that respect children’s wellbeing and dignity and also offer many opportunities for success and acknowledge their achievement (WHO n.d, p.2). Arguably, the way children and adults perceive and define wellbeing differs greatly. Children usually perceive wellbeing as feelings of happiness, being secure in social relations, having a good and positive physical environment, and having material resources among others (Statham and Chase 2010, p.11). Many children confirm that personal achievement and rewards, positive feeling about oneself, and positive relationships are some of the things that affects their emotional wellbeing. Examining the features regarding health and welfare are the accountability of all consultants and support staff in the course of their job and interaction with children. Children’s welfare includes mental and emotional wellbeing, social wellbeing, and physical wellbeing associated with promoting children’s health among others. In many schools today, health and wellbeing form part of the curriculum areas to enhance development of knowledge and skills necessary for providing adequate support to children’s mental, physical, social as well emotional wellbeing. Ensuring good health and wellbeing is a significant factor in a healthy human development. Schools have a lot to contribute to the development of children’s emotional, mental, social and physical wellbeing. For instance, through schools, children’s self-belief, self-efficacy, and attitudes can be significantly influenced and this in turn enables these children to be effective contributors to society. Therefore, it is important to prioritize children’s health and wellbeing in educational curriculum. This will affect positively on children’s health and wellbeing resulting to generational change. More so, strong leadership is very important if schools are to strengthen their role in promoting children’s health and wellbeing. For instance, leaders who understand the value of upholding children’s health and wellbeing are more likely to support learning and development and improve children’s wellbeing. Teachers need to understand that good health and wellbeing are very important to ensure effective learning. Therefore, it is necessary for school leaders and teachers to understand the importance of all aspects of health and wellbeing. Arguably, a school’s environment can promote children’s wellbeing and learning if it is safe and friendly; promotes cooperation among students; encourage supportive and open communications. More so, the school should prevent or avoid physical punishments, bullying, discrimination and any form of violence and ensure that there is non-violent interaction in classrooms and on the playground (WHO n.d, p.1). Schools provide necessary services to children that contribute positively to their wellbeing (Ridge 2011, p.80). Choosing health enables schools to address certain health issues like bullying and develop effective strategies to deal with such issues. Strategies such as healthy lives focus on improving the health schoolchildren by supporting schools’ efforts to promote wellbeing (Aggleton, Dennison and Warwick 2010, p.149). Children’s experience in school can make a very big difference on their wellbeing. Through learning experiences, children’s sense of self-worth and self-efficacy are developed and these are very important in their lives. Effective learning positively influences children’s mental, social and emotional wellbeing. Learning in a friendly and safe environment where relationships are positive and children feel valued promotes good mental, social as well as emotional health among them. Furthermore, a sense of involvement and some kind of control over the immediate environment is very important for children to flourish. Therefore, there is a need for various schools to involve children in as many ways as possible and offer many different opportunities for these children to be aware of their talents and interests contribute where necessary and achieve success. Schools should create variety of learner engagement processes so as to encourage students contribute and speak their mind hence promoting their wellbeing. More so, personal learning planning helps children to reflect on their strengths for development and self-improvement. Personal assessment should incorporate self-evaluation, goal setting as well as monitoring. This is very useful when it comes addressing children’s learning needs and all aspects of children’s health and wellbeing should be considered part of this process. Children’s academic performance and well-being are closely related, that is, children cannot learn when they feel unsafe or have health problems. Research findings reveal that it is very hard to engage and teach children whose emotional development has been interfered with (NHSS, n.d, p.16). Those children having good health and wellbeing learn more effectively as opposed to their counterparts (Great Britain 2004, p.64). Because achievement is every child’s dream, schools are encouraged to provide a range of extended services to enable children engage and achieve their life goals. Schools can contribute to children’s wider well-being through various ways; first, by assisting every child achieves the highest educational standards. Secondly, schools should deal with any form of bullying in schools and create a safe surrounding as these help in enhancing children’s wellbeing and their psychological development. Thirdly, schools can also contribute to children’s wellbeing and health by engaging and assisting parents in supporting their children’s learning and development. More so, schools can decide to become one of the healthy schools and enhance healthy lifestyles by offering drugs education, health education lesson, and sporting activities among others. This way, they will be able to encourage children to adopt healthy eating habits, shun away from drugs and engage in physical activities. Additionally, schools can contribute to the child’s wellbeing by creating educational awareness, encourage various social members to value, and embrace education as the only possible way of escaping poverty among them. By doing so, most children will further their studies and achieve their dreams and become successful members of the society that contribute positively to the societal wellbeing. Furthermore, schools can ensure that all children attend classes, encourage students to behave responsibly, offer many opportunities to enable them air out their view, and encourage them to participate in various volunteering activities and help others. Finding appropriate meaning of childhood wellbeing is an ongoing study in the UK. More so, there have considerations of how childhood wellbeing is analyzed across different policy jurisdictions within UK (Statham and Chase 2010, p.4). Reports indicate that the wellbeing of children in the UK is good as compared to that of other children from other countries (Watson 2012, p.80). About a third of UK children have a positive health status (Foley 2008, p.84). Research findings indicate that UK is one of the rich countries that are ranked bottom for the provision of children’s wellbeing (UNICEF 2007, p.3). The concept emotional wellbeing refers to a holistic state present when various feelings of an individual are combined and balanced effectively. Schools should know that ensuring that children’s health and wellbeing are upheld helps in creating a healthy and flourishing school community. The wellbeing of children involves developing children’s social, emotional and behavioral skills. Some of the skills include creating and maintaining friendships, dealing with conflict effectively, and being able to effectively and successfully learn among others. Establishing programs that promote emotional wellbeing benefits schools significantly especially in school improvement. Bullying is one of the factors that undermine children’s emotional health in schools. Studies show that bullying is a common practice in many schools with a good number of children being the victims. Researchers reveal that bullying impacts negatively on children’s emotional health and leads to depression and anxiety among others. However, children’s emotional wellbeing can be enhanced if they identify, respond to and control their emotions. More so, schools can ensure learning occurs in healthy and safe environment that promotes collaboration and prevent anti-social behaviors. Some schools have the most effective strategies to deal with anti-social b behaviors such as bullying, engage children, and create time to talk about relationships and social problems including bullying. By learning about social responsibility, children are less likely to engage in bullying practices. Emotional needs of children who bully can be death with through effective structured whole school approach program. To promote children’s emotional wellbeing and address some of the social problems such as bullying, schools may develop strong ethos that facilitate tolerance and respect. Secondly, schools can establish a positive leadership from senior staff to teachers particularly on how to deal with bullying. More so, having a planned approach in the school curriculum and teaching programs addressing social challenges and promoting children’s self-esteem and confident relationships is necessary. Carrying out anti-bullying campaigns is also useful when addressing bullying in schools (Foley and Leverett 2008, p.76). Furthermore, schools should involve their students in procedures dealing with social cases like bullying through peer mediation (NHSS, n.d, p.20). Peer tutoring, education and counseling are also part of peer-assisted learning process (Foley and Leverett 2008, p.63). A strategy to ensure children’s health is prioritized through multi-agency operating towards a common outcome will truly enhance children’s health and wellbeing (Foley 2008, p.92). Most schools have assigned some staff members to be responsible for children’s protection and welfare. This way, it is easy to ensure that school staff enhances students’ wellbeing (Mcauley and Rose 2010, p.103). More so, schools can create skills and model behavior necessary for tackling mental and emotional aspects of children’s health (Foley 2008, p.102). In addition, the local authority can play a significant role in promoting children’s wellbeing; for instance, the local authority may develop effective working relationships and partnerships. Accordingly, the authority can provide training and creating awareness on good health and wellbeing, and also promoting safe and positive environment to enable children interact effectively and successfully use the available opportunities to achieve their dreams (Baginsky 2008, pp.34-35). Moreover, schools need to engage parents during the promotion of children’s health and wellbeing. Family relationships greatly affect children’s wellbeing and health. Therefore, schools can provide structured parenting courses to enable those parents having difficulty controlling their children’s behavior to do so. However, not all parents feel comfortable in school environment and this may influence parents’ involvement in promoting children’s wellbeing and health (Aggleton, Dennison and Warwick 2010, p.141). However, it is difficult to measure school’s contribution to children’s wellbeing because there other factors influencing children’s wellbeing (Mcauley and Rose 2010, p.106). Factors like poverty need to be considered since poverty has an impact on children’s wellbeing (Ridge 2011, p.76). Ethnicity and racial background, cultural differences and inequality also influence children’s health and wellbeing. In conclusion, promoting children’s health and wellbeing is very important to enable children develop healthily and be able to achieve their set goals. Children should be protected and their health and wellbeing enhanced. Schools are very important institutions that play a leading role in promoting children’s health and wellbeing. Schools may develop comprehensive health policies; promote staff health education training; ensure proper management of health education resources; and broadly covers health content in their health education curriculum. These are some of the ways through which schools can enhance children’s health and wellbeing. Using a whole school approach can help schools to contribute significantly to students’ welfare. For instance, schools can promote children’s wellbeing by assisting every child achieve the highest educational standard, assist and engage parents in supporting their children’s learning and development. Moreover, schools can aggressively address social problems such as school bullying and create a safe surrounding that will promote children’s wellbeing and development. Lastly, schools can effectively contribute to children’s health and wellbeing by enhancing healthy lifestyles and offering training on drugs, provide health education lessons, and sporting activities among others. Therefore, schools play a crucial role in enhancing children’s health and wellbeing and this is very important for children. References Aggleton, P., Dennison C., and Warwick, I., 2010, Promoting Health and Wellbeing Through Schools, London; Routledge. Baginsky, M., 2008, Safeguarding Children And Schools, London, Jessica Kingsley Publishers. Foley, P., 2008, Chapter 3: Health Matters, Promoting Children’s Wellbeing: Policy And Practice, pp. 75-110. Foley, P., and Leverett, S., 2008, Connecting With Children: Developing Working Relationships, pp.1-306. Great Britain, 2004, Choosing Health: Making Healthier Choices Easier - Executive Summary, London, Department of Health. Mcauley, C., & Rose, W., 2010, Child Well-Being Understanding Childrens Lives, London, Jessica Kingsley Publishers, National Healthy School Standard (NHSS), n.d, Promoting Emotional Health and Wellbeing, pp.1-54. Ridge, T., 2011, The Everyday Costs of Poverty in Childhood: A Review of Qualitative Research Exploring the Lives and Experiences of Low-Income Children in the UK, Children & Society, Vol. 25, pp. 73–84, doi:10.1111/j.1099-0860.2010.00345.x Statham, J., and Chase, E, 2010, Childhood Wellbeing: A Brief Overview, Childhood Wellbeing Research Centre, pp.1-18. The World Health Organization (WHO), n.d, Creating an Environment for Emotional and Social Well-Being, Information Series On School Health, Document 10, pp.1-44. UNICEF, 2007, Child Poverty in Perspective: An Overview of Child Well-Being in Rich Countries, Innocenti Report Card 7, pp. 1-50. Watson, D., 2012, Childrens Social and Emotional Wellbeing in Schools: A Critical Perspective, Bristol, U.K., Policy Press. Read More