Infants, children and young people

Developing stronger partnerships across the children’s sector

Almost half of children and young people in the UK experience some form of adversity, yet approaches to trauma, resilience, and early support vary widely across nations and local systems. Public health plays a central role in shaping trauma informed environments but teams need clear partnerships and practical guidance to do this well.

Creating healthier futures

The project, funded by The Health Foundation, and building on our ACEs work, brought together partners across the children’s sector to map how adversity, trauma, and resilience (ATR) are approached across the four nations, and develop guidance that local areas can use to improve outcomes for infants, children and young people (ICYP).

Our project advisory group, chaired by Sarah Muckle, Director of Public Health for Essex County Council, was made up of representatives from Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland, as well as:

View our ICYP resources

The change we’ve inspired so far

Strengthening collaboration across the four nations

Through our UK wide webinar series, attended by over 250 partners across the children’s sector, we helped build a shared language and clearer understanding of ATR across the 0–19 agenda. One session, delivered by Dr Warren Larkin, Consultant Clinical Psychologist and Managing Director of Warren Larkin Associates Ltd, explored how partners can apply a trauma‑ and resilience‑informed approach to improve outcomes for children and young people. This collective focus has strengthened alignment between local areas and fortified a national response.

Influencing national policy

By convening partners from across the four nations, we brought together evidence and system insights that have directly informed national policy processes. This has included contributing to the Child Poverty Taskforce Strategy, coordinating a public health response to the Youth Employment, Education and Training consultation, and providing input into national work on children and young people’s mental health.

Supporting practice

We published a new What Good Looks Like guide for addressing ATR, setting out a clear vision of effective practice across the 0–19 system. Alongside this, we developed a joint position statement on maximising the role of health visitors and school nurses in safeguarding, helping local systems strengthen frontline practice. We further endorsed a set of recommendations, produced by FrameWorks UK, on how to frame conversations about ATR with children and young people, supporting strengths based communication.

This is incredibly powerful. Clearly "educating" people isn't needed - many have the knowledge and understanding already! We just need to get better at communicating.
ADPH Member

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