Foyer Health - Application for Year Two Funding Now Open!

We’ve had a really exciting time getting the first year of Foyer Health: The Healthy Transitions programme, off the ground. Foyers around England have come up with lots of creative approaches to healthy eating and young people are getting involved in designing the activities in their Foyer.

Now the time has come to invite Foyers to apply to join in with Year 2 of the programme. Year 2 of the programme runs from Sept 08 to August 09 and has a focus on promoting physical activity.

So, what does the programme include?

• A free 4 day coaching skills course for Foyer staff with a focus on enabling young people to set and achieve health and well-being goals of their own.
  Funding for Foyers to deliver holistic health taster sessions on healthy eating, mental well-being and physical activity.
• Funding for Foyers to develop and invest in sustainable physical activity opportunities for young people. For example, developing sports and activity clubs and developing healthy support networks through access to local gym and leisure facilities.Support and training from the Foyer Health Network and access to our specialist consultant Physical Activity Ambassadors.
• Achieving specialist physical activity accreditation standards for Foyers.
• Access to a capital funds.
• Evaluation

How to express your interest

Please send an email to the National Programme Manager, Nerys Edmonds nerys@foyer.net outlining:

• What your aims and objectives for participating in this year of the programme are.
• What your initial ideas and plans for developing sustainable approaches to increasing physical activity opportunities for young people are.
• How you will develop new activity or build on and enhance existing activity.
• What resources you have in place to support the programme.

The deadline for the expression of interest is 15th April 2008
If you are selected then you will be asked to complete a more detailed Stage 2 application, the deadline for which is the 15th June.
Foyers who submitted an application in December for Year 2 will be contacted directly to send in an updated plan.

Association for Young People's Health

The Association for Young People’s Health is a major new charity and membership organisation creating a focus for all professionals and organisations working in the field of young people’s health.

The Association is supported with funding from the Department of Health and the Department for Children, Schools and Families. It was launched at a conference held on the 6th February 2008 at the Institute of Child Health, London.

Join up Now !!

http://www.youngpeopleshealth.org.uk/

Notes and Ideas from the Foyer Health Network Meetings March '08

Hi There

Over this last week I've had the pleasure of travelling around the country with Lisa Fallowfield Head of Health Projects at Aberdeen Foyer and meeting up with all of you and hearing your ideas and progress with your Foyer Health programmes.

We've had some great ideas and I wanted to get them out there for everyone to see as soon as possible

Here's just a few.....

Fun things to try with fruit

The Human Fruit Machine ! - this was a great idea from Painswick Inn Foyer who created a human fruit machine at their launch event on 22nd Feb. The machine needs four people, 1 to act as the lever, and three as the "fruit machine ". Pull the handle and each of the three pick a fruit at random from a bowl. A lucky player will find three lemons or pears selected and will duly get fruit as a prize ! ...need to know more ..contact Painswick Inn Foyer

Torbay Foyer breaks the fruit barrier ....... Torbay Health Champion Sarah initially approached local supermarkets about accessing some fruit and veg for the Foyer, but did not meet a very helpful response. So she went off to find out who supplied the supermarkets locally with fruit and veg and found a very helpful local supplier who will be supporting their launch.

Also try ..fruit as prize ...Aberdeen have used a pineapple as a Trophy ! Feel the fruit ..Why not have a Fruity Friday and provide a small goody bag of fruit to all residents. Others have managed to transform their tuck shop.......

Another way to encourage young people to try cooking something new and healthy is to put together a healthy recipe Kit/goody bag , that contains a recipe and then all the ingredients individually portioned. You could get a member of staff to demonstrate the recipe and then give the Kit/good bags for young people to go home to their flats and try it for themselves.....

"Eat anything you like day" - another great idea from Painswick Inn. Painswick In n have asked young people to think of one single food that they would like to try and have teamed up with their local Waitrose to make it happen.It is rumoured that Lobster may well get on the menu for a few young people curious to try it out .........

We learnt a lot from Lisa this week about integrating healthy eating into all kinds of projects that are not necessarily "health projects". try integrating a healthy breakfast or lunch into learning programmes at your Foyer. Also get healthy menu preparation on the agenda for any outward bound/Princes Trust programmes you run.

FARESHARES

We also heard about the success of FARESHARES food distribution scheme in some areas. FareShare is the national charity working to relieve food poverty by providing quality food and other support services to organisations working with disadvantaged people in the community.

Find out more about Fareshare at their website below and also check for a local project near you. Meanwhile we will check out some of your concerns.
http://www.fareshare.org.uk/local/index.html

http://www.fareshare.org.uk/index.html

Food Policies
We had some discussion this week about the value of establishing a food policy for Foyers to guide practice. Developing a food policy is one of the standards in the healthy eating accreditation standards for Foyers that Year One foyers will be working towards.

I will be tracking down a an example workplace policy ..but in the meantime here are two links to schools food policy guidance and templates

http://www.sustainweb.org/pdf/G5_MFPol.pdf

http://foodinschools.datacenta.uk.net/

Healthy catering guidelines
http://www.nwph.net/food_health/Taskforce_Publications/Forms/Detail%20View.aspx

The North West Food and Health Task Force

A useful website with lots of guidance documents
http://www.nwph.net/food_health/default.aspx

more soon .........bye for now
Nerys

Foyer Health Blog - Happy Blogging!

Welcome to the Foyer Health BlogThis blog is designed to get you started on your Foyer Health Programme, and offers guidance, resources, advice and a space to exchange ideas and find out new information. It offers guidance on key project management areas like monitoring, branding and publicity as well as lots of resources and information on our key themes of healthy eating, physical activity and mental well-being.

This blog is a starting point, and the aim is to add in new ideas and information throughout the year. So, any good ideas you have, resources you find or create, can be shared with other Foyers.We want to provide effective ways of sharing information across the network, and getting up to date information to you without clogging up your inbox! To this end we have set up the blog that will be a conduit of updates, information, downloads and discussion.

Lucy Billings is our new Projects Assistant and will be the first point of contact for all general enquiries you can contact her on lucy@foyer.net Tel: 0207 430 2212. There is also an email address for the programme.

Please use this for any queries and bookings for life coaching training, venues, Foyer Health Network Meetings and all general enquiries health@foyer.net

Enjoy!

Foyer Health Champions

Foyer Health is an exciting three year programme to increase the skills, resources and opportunities that disadvantaged young people have to make a healthy transition to adulthood.

There are three themes to the programme: healthy eating, physical activity and mental well-being. Foyer Health is funded by the Big Lottery Fund’s Well-being programme and managed by the Foyer Federation.

Foyer Health has four key areas:
1. Young people will be supported to choose and achieve a health and well-being goal through one to one support from a member of staff that has been on a life coaching skills training programme.
2. Young people will have opportunities to experience a range of healthy living activities through taster sessions on healthy eating, physical activity and mental well-being.
3. Every Foyer will develop a specialist project on one of the following: healthy eating (Year One), physical activity (Year Two) or mental well-being (Year Three).
4. Foyer Health will also enable 120 Foyers in England to achieve specialist health accreditation standards that will ensure that every Foyer is a healthy place to live, work and learn.

The Health Champion
The Health Champion role is to lead and co-ordinate the Foyer Health programme in each Foyer.
Areas of responsibility include:

• Establishing and co-ordinating a Health Action Team that includes at least 2 young people, and may involve other staff, managers, board members and relevant outside agencies.
  Engaging and supporting young people to participate in planning, designing, delivering and evaluating the programme.
• The Health Action team will develop the planned activities for your Foyer Health programme in consultation with young people. Once ideas are developed for taster sessions and your healthy eating programme, the Health Champion along with the Health Action team puts these plans into action and evaluates the outcomes.
• The Health Champion will lead and co-ordinate each Foyer in working towards the Foyer Health Accreditation Standards (core health standards plus specialist healthy eating standards). This will require auditing your current provision, engaging young people in assessing the current service, taking any action needed to for the Foyer to meet the standards, and collecting evidence to demonstrate how the standard has been met. The healthy eating standards must be met by the end of year One (Nov 08) and the core health standards by the end of 2009.
• The Health Champion takes the lead in promoting the Foyer Health programme to young people and staff in the Foyer service and in partner agencies.
  They Health Champion creates new partnerships with external agencies to increase young people’s access to local health resources and/or develops existing partnership working.
  The Health Champion co-ordinates input from other Foyer staff, partner agencies, Foyer Federation Healthy Eating Ambassadors, and other sessional workers and may lead some of the planned activities
• Depending on how your Foyer chooses to manage the programme, the Health Champion may be responsible for collating the quarterly monitoring forms to be returned to the Foyer Federation to ensure continues funding.
• The Health Champion leads and co-ordinates the input of the Foyer into the evaluation of Foyer Health. This may involve collecting case studies, maintaining evidence of activities, getting feedback from young people.

Opportunities for Health Champions
Health Champions will have access to range of opportunities to support their role and for professional development through attending quarterly Foyer Health Network meetings/workshops, access to peer support and practice sharing with other Foyers, external specialist speakers and specialist input from Health Eating Ambassadors.