Healthy living

Making sure children and families have access to the health services they need is a big part of what we do.

With on-site health services at our centres plus links with health professionals in the wider CAMHS and NHS, we're able to support families in a variety of ways.

From breastfeeding advice to healthy eating and healthy living initiatives, we do everything we can to help children and families live healthy lives and access the support they need. And we strengthen their emotional wellbeing each step of the way.

Inclusive services

As the UK's leading voluntary sector provider of services to disabled children, we also have the expertise to deliver inclusive universal and specialist services for children with even the most complex needs.

Services that work

Accessing health services through children's centres works. Take our centre in Kettering: there hasn't been a single no-show over the last 14-months in the centre's ante-natal clinic. The local obstetrician said this was unheard of in NHS clinics. Women who would not be accessing these services at the hospital are now coming to our centre. Big improvements like this do happen, when the support is there, in the way that families need it.

Our health services:

• ante-natal and post-natal support
• birth registration
• breast-feeding support
• weaning
• baby massages
• primary and community health and social care including advice about health and child development
• access to CAMHS, SALT, OT advice
• speech and language intervention
• support for children and parents with special needs, including help getting access to specialised services.
• specialist disability services
• obstetrician services
• oral health promotion
• direct work on emotional wellbeing and resilience
• work with parents who have substance misuse or mental ill health

Healthy eating and healthy living:

• 'cook and eat' sessions provided by Sure Start Dieticians
• smoking cessation clinics run by specialist midwife
• healthy eating in pregnancy
• healthy cooking on a budget
• health checks run by a health trainer
• promotion of physical activity
• health and physical activities promotion, events and information sharing