Hear from Sam Richardson, PSHE Lead & Public Health Trainer at Blackpool Council, on the transformative impact of PSHE Association membership for local schools and colleges.
As the official subject association and national body for PSHE education, we work with a number of local authorities throughout England to support the implementation of localised public health priorities through high-quality, safe and effective PSHE education.
We caught up with Sam Richardson, PSHE Lead & Public Health Trainer at Blackpool Council, to unpack some of the specific challenges the council face and the impact of PSHE Association membership.
We would like to thank Sam Richardson and the Blackpool public health team for sharing their experiences of membership with us.
We began by asking Sam what the local priorities were in Blackpool including those related to public health.
Here’s what he said:
Local priorities include combatting drugs and alcohol, ensuring people can and do access sexual health services, addressing the emerging public health issue of gambling and gaming, as well as addressing nicotine addiction and the challenges being posed by vaping, and other areas. We do our utmost to ensure that our children and young people receive education that reflects the breadth and depth of public health issues, including wider determinants of health.
Blackpool Council has purchased PSHE Association school membership for all of its schools as part of our group membership offer.
We asked Sam if and how membership has contributed towards meeting local priorities?
The membership to the Association has been a positive addition to the range of tools we provide for colleagues working with children and young people to implement effective primary prevention concerning the range of public health priorities in Blackpool.
Membership to the Association has provided those working with children and young people the opportunity to access information on a range of issues covered under the PSHE/RSHE umbrella, with many of these issues overlapping with key public health priorities. This is particularly important in the context of many educators not necessarily being a specialist in PSHE in the way they may be in Primary Education or a subject in Secondary or Further Education.
Sam — and the wider team at Blackpool Council — found this aspect of PSHE Association support especially helpful:
Being kept up to date with changes relating to the statutory guidance around RSHE and the implications for colleagues working in Education has been invaluable. Having an understanding of the complex nature of how policy impacts on PSHE/RSHE delivery in education is also helpful as this positions us as a Local Authority to provide support to colleagues leading in these areas.
In addition to running our regional local authority network meetings, we also support other local events where possible.
Our regional Subject Specialist for the North West recently presented at one of Blackpool Council’s PSHE Leads’ network sessions.
It was useful as it acted as a timely reminder of the range of benefits that are on offer to education providers across Blackpool as a result of having access to the PSHE Association.
Would Sam recommend group membership to other Local Authorities and Multi-Academy Trusts?
Yes. It reduces the cost and means that we can ensure that all education providers have access to the same information/resources as a starting point to develop their curriculum and to keep up to date with any changes to legislation, as well as being informed of new resources being created by the specialist team at the PSHE Association.
Finally, we asked Sam if he has received any feedback from his schools about the membership:
One of our schools, which is part of a Multi-Academy Trust, has made the commitment to pay extra to upgrade their membership to School Plus membership to access the on-demand CPD library and online videos etc. — due to finding the resources so useful.