Before I get onto the important partnership stuff - let me just quickly see if you're awake and run through this 'misery formula' for you: 

Ok, are you ready?  Where W is weather, D is debt - minus the money (d) due on January's pay day, and T is the time since Christmas, Q is the period since the failure to quit a bad habit, M stands for general motivational levels and NA is the need to take action and do something about it.   Phew! Did you get all that, or like me do you think perhaps it's a load of old mumbo-jumbo? (or perhaps that should be M-J ?)  Anyway, my suggestion is to ignore silly scientific formulas, stop fretting that you failed that New Year's Resolution (Gourmet Jelly Beans in my case) go outside and get active.   

If you haven't had the chance to turn on the television in recent months then you've probably missed the massive surge on advertising attempting to promote childhood fitness (sometimes sandwiched between Walkers crisps and Mc Donald's adverts!) And there is a good reason for this surge - according to recent figures, a staggering 31.7% of children in the UK are overweight; many of these scarily predicted to die before their parents.  You may argue with your misinformed ESCO that the local figure is shown as 9.1% in the 2008 Fareham Health Profile (compared to a 9.9% England average), but if you happen to read the small print on the aforementioned document, you will find that this figure is for 'reception age' children only...

....and a lot can happen by the time a child reaches 18 years!

Therefore if over a quarter of children in the UK are fighting the onset of obesity and the requirement is for a child to participate in one hour's exercise a day - then it stands to reason that extended services and also families can play an enormous part in the fight against the flab.  With that in mind, we are looking at family learning opportunities that will motive families to get up, get out and get active together.  

You may find the following web sites of use for signposting family fitness (or they may even provide a useful source of ideas for your own extended school sports):

Kids Exercise

Change 4 Life

Active Kids Get Cooking

Fitter Families

Fit For Sport

Please remember that primary schools in Portchester are also welcome to contact myself or Maggie Knox, our friendly family learning coordinator, if you have any ideas for running 'fun and fitness family sessions' at your setting in 2009.   Maggie is presently setting up after-school sessions at Red Barn so I shall update you on progress in next month's blog.  And thanks to Maggie, the first of our family cycle training has successfully taken place at Wicor School on some of the coldest Saturdays on the south coast.  Congratulations to all of the families who took part and for your valuable (positive) feedback.  I hope this will be the first of many more successful (and hopefully warmer) courses taking place over the coming year.  For schools who are unable to offer the cycle training 'in-house' I hope that you will take the chance to signpost this valuable community cycling to your families.

As well as our priority for promoting health and fitness, we have also been exploring ideas for intergenerational projects.  It has been identified  by the older people's well-being team that amongst the top priorities for older people…enjoying activities between older and younger generations was felt to be of importance.   I sent out an e-mail to schools earlier in the month with some of the ideas discussed at our joint meeting in Hampshire.  Just as a reminder or for those who didn't see the e-mail, here are some of those ideas:

We shall certainly be investigating the feasibility of starting a Fareham Grandparents Support Group in 2009, but I would also welcome any ideas or suggestions how we can effectively incorporate inter-generational projects into our extended services.  I also look forward to hearing how our schools and community partners are preparing for Silver Surfers week (9-15th May 2009) and shall be happy to assist wherever possible.  Here is the communication I sent earlier this month to our Cams Hill and Portchester Partnership (CHAPP) head teachers about hosting a Silver Surfers event:

  Schools Communication - Silver Surfers Week  

Speaking of inter-generational projects - here's a brief D-Day, Disco and Downloads community play update for our partners. 

I have been fortunate enough to attend some of the Solent People's Theatre workshops at Portchester Community School (as the amateur film producer) and I have been completely bowled over by the enthusiasm of the young people who shall conduct the essential research (and living testimonies) that forms the basis of the play.  The facilitators from the theatre company are first class, thought-provoking, and have empowered our young researchers to really stretch their minds and explore their creativity.  I hope that I have captured some of the increased confidence of these young people on film; and also how beautifully they are gelling as a group.   Many thanks to everyone for making me feel so welcome...to a point where I actually forgot to film anything at last week's session!

Another important update from one of our fantastic community partners is now available online at Hampshire Arts News.  Ashcroft Arts Centre have now taken the successful pilot project at Harrison Primary School and expanded this provision to Wicor Primary School.   We look forward to more schools working with Ashcroft Arts Centre to provide a richer and more varied variety of extended school provision.  Please be patient as we can only roll this out to one school at a time.

Important Partnership News

Firstly, please could I kindly request that all schools in CAPP (Cams and Portchester Partnership) approach their Governors and ask for a big favour.  We wish to place an extra Governor representative on our (small but friendly) Management Group.   The commitment will be one meeting (1-2 hours) every half-term with myself, Paul O'Beirne (Chief Executive), Jude Ramshaw & Gay Shelley (cluster representative Head Teachers).  These meetings are scheduled to take place in the mornings at Fareham Community Action.  I know that Governors already give up a lot of their free time, and often have full-time jobs to boot, but if you have an enthusiastic school governor who would like to join our happy little group then please feel free to pass on my details in the first instance for more information.  Please note that management minutes are also available on the secure area of this web site for all of our partners.

As we now have a joint partnership group with a new name (CAPP) it seems fitting that we have a new Extended Services Logo.  By the time the partnership meets again in March I hope that I will have put together a competition for all of our schools in East Fareham to design a suitable logo.  It would be fantastic if we have a child-led design so I would welcome any ideas for running this competition in our schools; perhaps as a team exercise or tutor group challenge.

The first of our new partners working across all of our cluster schools is our Safer Schools Partnership Officer, Andy Higgs who will be based at Cams Hill and Portchester Community Schools.  May I also welcome Ken Walters from Uplands School who is now kindly coordinating the Trailblazers project at Cams Hill School.  Another very welcome new addition to our partnership is Wendy Sawyers who will be based at Red Barn Primary School (but working across the Portchester cluster) as our Parent Support Advisor.  I hope Wendy will be very happy working with our schools in Portchester and we look forward to promoting a rolling programme of convenient and locally-based parenting courses by summer 2009.  Please remember that families can still be referred for support via Fareham Locality Team, or for parents with younger children, they can also be referred to Family Support Workers at your local Children's Centre. 

Following my meeting with Wendy, we felt that another consideration for CAPP is to enable local parents and carers to have access to cheap and affordable uniforms.  With this in mind, I would like to find a suitable location for a second-hand & community uniform bank at the earliest convenience.  Once we have found a suitable location then I can see if a willing volunteer can act as our uniform coordinator.  This may involve laundering used uniform, making basic repairs, pricing stock and agreeing regular times to ‘open up shop’.  If you have any ideas for a suitable, central location, or know someone who would like to run such a valuable community ‘credit-crunch’ project then please get in touch.

For a recent article about the cost of education to parents please see the BBC news page dated
3 February 2009: Schools warned on parental costs

Don't forget that there are downloadable resources and guidance to help schools tackle the rising cost of state education to parents at the Citizen's Advice Adding Up web site:

Another exciting project to launch at the tail end of January 2009 is the new Conors Toy Library at Keepsake Children’s Centre.  This will run as a ‘stay and play’ session once a fortnight.  Once I have received flyers from the Children’s Centre I shall distribute the information to all of our cluster schools to promote this new venture.  Please keep checking back to the news page for more flyers and posters for signposting to your families.  To see how

To conclude this month’s blog, far from January being  "Monday Morning" month, I think you will agree that for the East Fareham partnership it is a month of positive change and forward thinking.  Thank you to everyone who joined us for our first CAPP meeting at the Civic Offices and for the excellent buffet breakfast organised by Tony Hopkins (Childcare Development Officer).  I look forward to discussing your project ideas at more length at our next meeting in March. 

I shall love you and leave you this month with a light-hearted 'fitting' finish...