Fitzrovia Youth in Action are Camden’s first youth setting to be awarded with the Healthy Futures Award, which is the borough’s health quality mark. The award was presented to FYA by Camden Council’s Executive Director of Supporting People, Martin Pratt, Cllr Nadia Shah and the Mayor of Camden, Cllr Richard Cotton, at the Camden Unity Cup Festival on Tuesday 1st August 2017.

Camden has a range of healthy setting awards to support families and young people from 0 – 19 years to improve their wellbeing, health outcomes and reduce health inequalities. These awards include Little Steps to Healthy Lives for early years settings, Healthy Schools, Healthy Lives Play Provider Award and most recently Healthy Futures for Camden’s youth settings. Healthy Futures is a joint initiative between the Integrated Youth Service and the Health and Wellbeing Team along with service providers including FWD, the Camden and Islington Sexual Health Network and mental health commissioning.

Healthy Futures brings together the different elements of improving health within one programme; ensuring clear, consistent and evidenced-based health messages are being communicated to young people across the borough. The programme focuses primarily on universal provision, increasing young people’s ability and confidence to make healthy choices for themselves both now and in the future, but also supports signposting and referrals to targeted services.

The award covers six health topics including:

• Healthy eating
• Physical activity
• Smoking, shisha and e-cigarettes
• Alcohol and other substances
• Sexual health and relationships
• Mental health and wellbeing

FYA is Camden’s leading youth action agency and each year supports hundreds of young people in planning and delivering projects which benefit other young people and the wider community.

Their everyday work for many years has supported Camden’s young people to be active, eat well and develop a greater understanding surrounding mental health and well-being, smoking, alcohol and other drugs.

They have a well-known Peer Education Project empowering young people to spread awareness through creating short films and music videos and delivering workshops at schools and youth clubs throughout Camden.  Last year, over 1000 young people participated in peer education workshops. 88% of those attending demonstrated an increase in knowledge around mental health and substance misuse.

This project along with the Football Project in Fitzrovia and West Euston area enables staff to build relations with local young people and support them to gain new skills. Whether a youth person wants to make new friends at the healthy living drop in-sessions, gain event management experience, give back to the community, receive support with CV writing or attend networking opportunities Fitzrovia Youth in Action can offer all of this and more.

Changes made as a result of achieving the award

• Staff are more confident to have conversations with young people about sexual health and relationships
• Planning to integrate healthy living (including substance misuse, mental health and well-being, sexual health and relationships) topic areas into their youth-led community events
• Improvements in the food provision for events
• Staff are more aware of local services and how to signpost/refer as a result of training provided
• New policies have been written and existing policies updated to provide staff with guidance on each health topic
• Planning more video recordings to prevent smoking uptake
• Non-food related rewards are now used to celebrate achievements
• A healthy eating culture is developing amongst staff as they encourage healthy choices for each other and young people
• More education on healthy eating is now a part of cooking activities
• Campaign and service promotion on notice boards
• Staff are encouraged to take part in local physical activity opportunities even more so now