What is the young people’s health challenge?

Barnardo’s and RCPCH have worked with hundreds of children and young people to co-design the NHS Young People’s Health Challenge toolkits with NHS England. Young people have come up with the structure, design and ideas that live inside these toolkits. We’ve tried and tested them with young people across England with great feedback, so we want even more young people to get involved!

Below is an overview of the structure of the programme and a Taster Pack. Follow the tabs at the top to plan how you’ll work with young people to get started.

The challenges involved in this programme are arranged under 7 themes that make up the colours of the rainbow: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet

if a young person wants to just do one or two challenges, they can earn a ‘Taking Part Certificate’ and see how they get on first. If they enjoyed taking part, they might choose to do another award as well…

If a young person really likes a particular theme, they can complete all 3 challenges in that theme and achieve a ‘Colour Award’. Each of the 3 challenges involves a different but related topic to learn about.

To get a ‘Rainbow Award’ a young person must complete one challenge from each colour section and make a note of this on their recording sheet. this means they’ll do 7 challenges altogether and find out about all of the different themes.

What do children and young people get out of it?

By Taking part in these challenges, young people will:

  • Learn more about health and wellbeing

  • Understand how to support your own and others’ wellbeing

  • Discover how everyday actions can help the NHS

  • Explore how you can give back to the NHS

  • Find out about different careers and jobs in the NHS

  • Take action to support the NHS

Young people will earn awards which will be recognised by certificates which you can find on this website, or we can post out to you.

Taster pack

Guidance

Guidance for adults supporting the delivery of the toolkit

CERTIFICATE

Young people can earn a taking part, colour or rainbow award

#1 Activities

A taster of the ‘Get Interested’ toolkit activities

#2 Activities

A taster of the ‘Get Involved’ toolkit activities

#3 Activities

A taster of the ‘Get Leading’ toolkit activities

Record Sheet

Example sheet for young people to record their activity