Studies in the youth literature show the importance of place and geography in relation to children and young people’s health and opportunities growing up in coastal England. By understanding the protective factors and assets within deprived coastal communities, it may be possible to develop models of care and service provision that build on assets and deliver community services to children and young people that are timely, preventative and health promoting before the health problems of adult life become more serious requiring extensive and costly interventions. Such models of care already exist in some coastal community services in England but little is yet known or understood about how they impact the experiences, lives and health consequences for children and young people.

Our definition of community services includes all community NHS, public health, social care and voluntary sector support within a coastal Integrated Care System.

Aim

We want to find out how integrated community service delivery models in coastal areas across England affect the experiences and health consequences for children and young people and their families.

  • Understand what different integrated community service delivery models exist for children and young people in coastal areas and how they work.
  • How integrated community service delivery models are accessed and attended by children and young people, the barriers and facilitators.
  • How children and young people and their families experience integrated community service delivery models.
  • What difference being able to access community services in a coastal area makes for children and young people’s health.
  • Assess the cost and benefits of integrated community service delivery models designed for children and young people.

We’ll use ‘realist evaluation methods‘ to understand what coastal community services work for children and young people and under what circumstances. To do this, we will deliver five main areas of work:

  1. A scoping review of the existing evidence on community services and service models for children and young people.
  2. Data collection from four diverse coastal locations across England. This will include questionnaires with young people and parents/carers/guardians, as well as local public health and administrative data analysis to better understand the local areas.
  3. We will also run interviews and focus groups with young people, parents/carers/guardians and professional staff.
  4. Economic analysis of integrated community service models of health and care to analyse their impact on investment, and the costs and benefits to children and young people’s health and care.
  5. We’ll combine our data sources for analysis to describe children’s coastal health and care services in context, how they work (mechanisms) and the consequences (outcomes) for children and young people, and identify recommendations from our findings.

Children and young people living in coastal communities experience large variations in health and care outcomes. The findings will help us to understand how integrated community service delivery models can help to keep children and young people well, and improve their health and social care. The work could strengthen Integrated Care Systems decision making in developing integrated community service delivery models that support children and young people and their families.

More Information?

Please contact circle@kent.ac.uk.

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