Healthy Families Growing Up - a blog from our facilitators in Leeds
We’re really pleased to be able to introduce the first in a series of blogs from Siobahn Jennings and her colleague Karen who have just finished their training to run our Healthy Families Growing Up programme in Leeds. Their regular blog will give an insight into the work that they’re doing to support 5-12 year olds as well as the positive impact that the programme has on families in Leeds.
14.10.2021 Our first week delivering HENRY in schools
This week was really exciting, Karen and I started not one, but two parent programmes in two Leeds schools.
Karen and I work as part of the Leeds Health and Wellbeing Service and our team already has many years of experience supporting schools with a whole school approach to health. But HENRY is new to us! Our service has been commission by Public Health to deliver the HENRY 5-12 Healthy Families Growing up Programme, with a target of 24 courses per year. We are only at the start of our journey, but we are planning to deliver the programme through schools and community groups and have trained 15 skilled facilitators with a wealth of experience and knowledge.
This week we started our first two programmes at St Bartholemews primary and Westwood Primary. We met some remarkable parents and were really pleased that they all enjoyed their first sessions and began to open up and share their stories of parenting. We had a mix of mums and dads in our sessions from different backgrounds and cultures. We quickly began to use our skills from our own HENRY training and learnt how to adapt our delivery and activities to each group, while maintaining the HENRY approach of course!
In both schools, a member of school staff who knew the parents joined us as well, and we hope to train them both to become facilitators soon!
We can’t wait for session 2 in both schools next week.
You can find out more about our local 5-12 programme at: