Leicestershire Partnership NHS Trust has created an educational website for children to learn about staying healthy and looking after their health.
The ‘Health for Kids’ website has been launched by the trust’s school nurses, with the help of 60 children from local primary schools.
It features games, videos and interactive health advice on topics such as bullying, bereavement, allergies and teeth-brushing techniques.
Margaret Clarke, lead school nurse at Leicestershire said the aim is to have a fun and educational website for children.
“Our health specialists have written the content in a way they hope the children will find interesting,” she said.
“The children involved have found it to be a fantastic learning opportunity for them, as we’ve all watched our ideas come to life.”
The website includes games such as the ‘poop shooter’, where you have to stop the alien from becoming constipated by clearing up food in its belly and collect ‘poo points’.
Another game is ‘lanterns in the wing’, a therapeutic game where children can write down how they are feeling in an “artistic” way and encourages them to share those feelings with others.
The content on the site is presented through four “themed” worlds: ‘Rumble in the Jungle’, which focuses on staying healthy; ‘water world’, which looks at feelings; ‘space world’ which deals with illness; and the ‘magical world’ which teaches children about how and when to get help.
The website, which has been part funded by Leicestershire County Council, also provides quizzes to “keep you on your toes” and a ‘factbot’ with health facts.
There is also a separate section of the site for parents and teachers which has information on where to find school nurses, how to help the children using the site and advice on keeping them healthy.
“We hope that children and parents will have a lot of fun with it over the summer break and that schools will begin using it in September,” said Clarke.