Type of Activity:
❑ Mentoring
❑ Peer Mentoring
x Workshop
Relevant pillar: Health Education
Relevant competence(s): Social & Civic, Sense of Initiative & Entrepreneurship, Communication, Transversal Elements
Duration: 2h (course) and 2h+ 2h (interactive group workshop)
Healthy life style in adulthood: Understanding of body and psychosexual development during adolescence, hygiene rules, healthy diet and physical activities- drug use – alcohol consumption, tobacco use, sex education and safe driving.
The activity consists of 2 meetings; each meeting has a duration of about 2 h.
- To promote a healthy lifestyle among children in care.
- To increase the knowledge and ability on healthy choices.
Knowledge of the significant rapid changes occurring during adolescence helps children in care to understand and adapt to these changes and enables them to avoid becoming victims of many harmful practices and serious illnesses.
There are six priority components for protection and promotion of adolescent health and development, as follows:
- good nutrition and dietary habits,
- healthy lifestyles,
- mental health,
- reproductive health and sexuality,
- personal health and hygiene.
The teen years are a time of rapid growth. They need extra nutrients to support bone growth, hormonal changes, and organ and tissue development, including the brain.
The understanding of National Health System and the ways that someone in need, could be helped by is essential for an independent life after leaving the care system. On the contrary, children in care are often confused about how the Health system works and where they should ask for help. As a paradox, the children in care while in care are fully covered, therefore when ageing out they face greater difficulties in taking care of themselves. Additionally, children in care often lack basic knowledge about the importance of healthy lifestyles and the risks associated with its absence.
The implementation of this activity is based on effective face-to-face interventions (e.g., cognitive–behavioral therapies) that are operationalized and transformed for delivery via group interactive activities with the goal of symptom improvement. Usually these activities are tailored to the child’s needs, and are interactive, a feature that can be enhanced by play roles, game playing etc.
- Intercultural differences that can become barriers in promoting healthy lifestyles.
- Lack of willingness of children in care to participate at the sessions/meetings.
- The group activities will be taking into account different cultural differences and if needed translators will participate at the sessions.
- Give motivations (for example a kind of certificate for children in care) and discuss with them the potential measurable results
Implementation Steps
Health education will be provided through interactive group activities, including role playing, a group game with questions and answers that will lead to different results depending on the young people’s choices.
First meeting-
a. Interactive activities to get to know each other
b. Discussion on physical, mental and emotional changes during adolescence period.
Second meeting-
Interactive game: questions and answers that lead to different results related to total health of the person. Role playing depends on the choices that occur via the children in care/participants.
For example, to raise awareness about the risks associated with loneliness and promote alternatives of being part of a social network (as a protective factor) the LCP can use the following video as a visual and creative discussion trigger (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n3Xv_g3g-mA).
The video should be screened in sections, and there should be enough time for the youth to discuss the questions with their partner(s) before watching the next part of the video.
Remember!!!
This might be a sensitive topic for some people, so only propose this activity in groups with a certain maturity.
Third meeting- Healthy Life Choices
Playing roles and other interactive activities on healthy choices in different aspects (sexual education, consumption of alcohol, tobacco, drugs etc.) depending on the needs of the group of children in care.
For example:
Discussion on healthy dietary option:
Dietary options are one of the first decisions teens start making on their own. However, some teens tend to make poor food choices. In small groups the participants can discuss and analyse the food pyramid and extract information from the pictures to about good balance nutrition and living a healthy lifestyle.
Conclusion of the workshop.