Strategic Context
Giving every child the best start is crucial to reducing health inequalities across the life course. What happens before and during pregnancy, in the early years and during childhood has life long effects on many aspects of health and wellbeing in adulthood from obesity, heart disease, mental health, educational achievement and economic status.
The Children and Young People Joint Strategic Needs Assessment (JSNA) for Manchester has been produced in recognition of the fact that improving the health outcomes of children and young people in Manchester requires a multi-agency approach to the collation, analysis, presentation and publication of data, research and intelligence relating to the health and wellbeing of children, young people and families across the city.
Having an effective Children and Young People JSNA is a way of ensuring that local strategies for addressing poor health and care outcomes in Manchester are underpinned by a strong evidence base in terms of the range and effectiveness of services to support children, young people and families in need of help, care and protection. The JSNA is also a vehicle for developing insight from service users, removing barriers to delivery and reducing duplication across partners.
The JSNA as a whole looks at the health needs of the population across the two ‘life stages’ of children and young people (Starting Well and Developing Well), and adults and older people (Living Well, Working Well and Ageing Well).
As part of the JSNA, key data relating to the health and wellbeing of children and young people in Manchester has been detailed in a number of Topic Reports. The topic reports contain information about what the data means for Manchester, what we are currently doing, what we would like to achieve and what we need to do to achieve this.
The Children and Young People JSNA is a ‘living’ resource that will be expanded and developed over time through consultation with key stakeholders and will incorporate the views of children and young people.