State of the Nation 2022: children and young people’s wellbeing

 

Government analyses evidence about the wellbeing of children and young people aged 5 to 24 and is the fourth annual report. The report aims to provide an evidence base for those who work with children and young people. Local government can use the findings to help “deliver better wellbeing outcomes” including:

 

1. Personal well being: dipped in 2020 and recovered close to pre-pandemic levels by 2021 and 2022. New trend: greater anxiousness reported by secondary school pupils and those from white backgrounds

 

2. Mental and physical health: remained consistent during recent years but emotional difficulties and eating problems are at elevated levels compared to 2019

 

3. Education and skill: although satisfaction with school and feeling safe there is an increase in reported levels of low happiness.

 

4. More children are reporting low happiness with their family and friends compared to before the pandemic. Correlation between loneliness and mental health disorders.

 

5. ‘What we do’: children’s happiness with how they spent their time dropped during the height of the pandemic but seems to have recovered.

 

6. Self, society and the future: young people’s happiness when considering their futures appears to have increased from 2021, after dipping during the height of the pandemic.   We at Northumberland News hope that Northumberland County Councils scrutiny and audit committees take this excellent work and report clearly a way forward to improve the lives of young people in at least the six areas of weakness and strengths displayed in the Governments report

 

Northumberland Labour Pushing to Dual the A1 to Berwick.

 

‘Northumberland Tories are happy to accept second best says Councillor Scott Dickinson’

The lack of noise from Northumberland Conservatives regarding the stop-start nature of the Tory Governments roll out of the short extension of dual carriageway to the A1 that will link Morpeth to Ellingham, 25 miles short of Berwick, is worrying Northumberland Labour Group Leader, Scott Dickinson.

The MP for Berwick, Anne Marie Trevelyan has run on the A1 dualling ticket for the last three general elections. During that period she held the post of Transport Secretary without showing any ambition to get her Government in power to expand their plans to deliver a safe dualled trunk road through Northumberland to improve trade with Scotland up the A1 east coast corridor.

Northumberland News spoke with Councillor Dickinson who has always supported an improved highway through the County to weld closer travel links with Scotland and improve economic growth in East coast towns in Northumberland and the Borders as commercial transport delivers from the South to the Lothians via the highly developed West coast and Scottish trunk roads and motorways . 

He told us “ following the recent local government results showing Labour’s new policies have brought hundreds of thousands of Brexit supporters back into Labour’s fold I expect Labour will form the next Government” “I will be pushing the future Labour Government to ensure that Transport funding to link England and Scotland is top of their agenda and that twiddling around with an option that shows low ambition from Berwicks current MP and her County Council with Northumberland Tories seemingly happy to accept second best.” “I am also very keen on meeting with my Scottish Labour colleagues who are experiencing growth as the SNP have shown disregard for the Scottish people through the economic crisis and have been enveloped in crisis as a political party through investigations into their finances”. “I believe we can campaign on a level playing field with Scottish Labour on this essential issue.”