The Labour Party has announced a Child Health Action Plan listing their commitments to improving children’s health, if elected to government. The plan follows Labour’s goal to create a prevention-led healthcare system, with changes covering children’s mental health, obesity, and dental care. Labour leader, Keir Starmer, said: ‘Healthy, happy children is not something nice to have, it’s a basic right that has economic urgency. We want the next generation to be chasing their dreams, not a dentist’s appointment.’
The action plan tackles a range of topical health issues within children including obesity. Recent childhood obesity figures from National Child Measurement Programme found that 2 in 5 children leave primary school overweight. In Labour’s action plan, they wish to tackle obesity concerns through prevention, including a 9pm watershed on junk food advertisements, compulsory physical activities in school and a breakfast club for all primary school aged children. With preventative commitments such as this, Labour hopes to improve life expectancy for all within ten years and create the ‘healthiest generation of children ever’.
Feeding into Labour’s plan to shift the focus of the healthcare system into the community, is their promise to tackle children’s mental health. As of August last year, almost 240,000 children and young people were waiting for treatment from mental health services. Labour has said they will cut waiting lists for services by recruiting more staff, introduce mental health support in every school and deliver open access to mental health hubs to every community.
Other commitments include cutting waiting times for care, banning vape marketing aimed at children and introducing a national supervised toothbrushing programme for 3–5-year-olds. Royal College of Nursing General Secretary and Chief Executive, Pat Cullen said that as leaders of public health services, nursing staff will ‘support a focus on prevention and detection for the youngest’ but stresses that the next Government should list work with healthcare professionals to create effective schemes. She said: ‘[Nurses and other healthcare professionals] can support the development of this approach with expertise and evidence on the clear benefits to health outcomes, society and communities when you invest in children and parents to break the cycle of disadvantage.’