The Child Health Equity Framework for the Drivers of Health Inequalities

The Child Health Equity Framework sets out the social determinants of health for children and young people. Its main purpose is to underpin action for achieving greater health equity.

The framework has been developed by the Children and Young People’s Health Equity Collaborative (CHEC) - a partnership between the Institute of Health Equity, Barnardo’s and three Integrated Care Systems (ICSs), Birmingham and Solihull, Cheshire and Merseyside, and South Yorkshire. Critically, it has been developed with input from over 300 children and young people, thereby ensuring that what matters for health to children and young people informs onward action. The children and young people emphasised the importance of relationships and safety and feeling valued, their views are summarised in the insights document.

Despite their importance, the social determinants of health are often not sufficiently addressed in services designed to improve health and wellbeing. The Framework illustrates where Integrated Care Systems (ICSs) can take action to improve health for children and young people and reduce inequalities. At a time when more families are living in poverty and health is deteriorating and inequalities widening, joined-up action to improve health through the social determinants is vital.

The framework will be used by ICS partners to support the development of interventions to improve the health and wellbeing of babies, children and young people in their local areas; to guide analysis of data and development of indicators to assess and monitor health inequalities; to highlight gaps in our data and understanding; and to strengthen partnerships between all those responsible for health and wellbeing and the SDH within local areas.

Children and Young People’s Health Equity collaborative: Children and Young People’s Insights Report

This report documents the children and young people’s engagement exercise that took place as part of the Children and Young People’s Health Equity Collaborative in July to august 2023.

The purpose of this work was to understand the key factors that children and young people identify as being important to health and wellbeing to directly inform the development of the Health Equity Framework and work of the Collaborative going forward. The engagement resources included in the report were developed by the Barnardo’s Voice and Influence team and adapted for use by Voluntary Sector organisations.