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Mother and childMaternal, child and young people's health

This section brings together a range of information and resources on child, young people and maternal health in Southampton.

Southampton has a young demographic compared to the England average. There are about 60,000 children aged between 0 and 19 years of age living in Southampton. Ethnic diversity is increasing and about a quarter of children and young people live in poverty.

Although Southampton’s birth rate is projected to remain steady until 2022, a previous increase in birth rate continues to place increasing demands upon a whole range of both universal services, such as schools, GPs and dentists, as well as targeted services and specialist services, such as parenting support, speech and language therapy or specialist social care services.

In Southampton, the intention remains to ensure that every child and young person has the best opportunity to:

  • Enjoy good health, and have access to timely help when in poor health
  • Be kept safe from harm, abuse and neglect
  • Enjoy growing up and achieve well in academic and other activities
  • Make a positive contribution to community life and have their views taken into account
  • Enter adult life resilient and well placed to achieve economic wellbeing

However, this is currently not the case for all children and young people. We know that too many are not achieving well as they could at school and do not benefit from good health due to obesity, poor diet, poor choices in relation to alcohol and drugs and premature sexualisation. Too many parents are trapped in a cycle of not knowing how to help their children succeed in sustaining high aspirations for their own lives, how to be resilient to protect their mental health and reduce the risk of poor choices around the use of tobacco, alcohol and drugs.

Sadly, the detrimental impact of austerity and welfare reforms is greatest for children. Given the current economic climate, services are working to meet increasing demand with less and less resource. The effective and proportionate use of resources is critical to ensuring that support is available for those who need it throughout childhood and into early adulthood. Further to this, parents, families, communities and services must work more closely together to ensure that children get a good start in life.

An intelligence briefing on the health of children and young people in Southampton can be downloaded from the resources section below, along with a supporting data compendium. In addition, a range of information, data and profiles on children’s health is available to browse via the interactive Office for Health, Improvement & Disparities (OHID) fingertips tool, which can be accessed below.

OHID - Child health profiles
Dataset

Resources

Parenting, childhood and adolescence intelligence JSNA resources

The parenting, childhood and adolescence briefing and data compendium below summarise some of the main health needs for children, young people and mothers in Southampton. It covers population demographics and change, low birth weight, breastfeeding, smoking during pregnancy, teenage pregnancy, obesity, health behaviours, oral health, mental health and special educational needs.

Births dashboard
Visualisation
Healthy weight dashboard
Visualisation
JSNA - Parenting, childhood and adolescence briefing October 2016
Report
pdf | 2MB | 03.10.16
Births and healthy start data compendium
Dataset
xlsx | 1MB | 01.02.17

Office for Health, Improvement & Disparities (OHID) – Child health profiles

OHID have published a number of profiles on child and maternal health on their fingertips platform, which brings together a range of publicly available data, information, reports, tools and resources on child and maternal health into one easily accessible hub. It helps users find and use the information and evidence needed to improve decision making as part of the planning or commissioning process. The data is regularly updated as new releases become available.

OHID - Child health profiles
Dataset
OHID - Child and maternal health statistics
Dataset

Southampton Public Health Annual Reports (PHAR)

Each year the Director of Public Health in Southampton produces a report on the state of health in the city. These reports consider underlying trends, some of the future challenges that the city faces and make recommendations for how health and wellbeing can be improved in Southampton. A number of these reports have addressed the health and wellbeing of children in Southampton and can be downloaded via the links below.

Southampton Public Health Annual Reports
Report
2017 PHAR: Childhood Obesity
Report
pdf | 3MB | 01.09.18
2015 PHAR: The first 1,000 days of life
Report
pdf | 4MB | 06.06.16
Oral health inequalities for Southampton children: PHAR 2015 Supplementary Report
Report
pdf | 1MB | 01.03.16
2014 PHAR: Laying the foundations for better health for future generations
Report
pdf | 5MB | 23.06.15
2005 PHAR: Giving all children the best start in life
Report
pdf | 1MB | 23.07.06

Last updated: 03 October 2016