Furness Families Walk4Life

Through the summer of 2009 over 100 people from families across Barrow-in-Furness walked with the Ramblers on a series of walking programmes based at Action for Children Children's Centres. The film below tells the story of one of them -- Kylie.

Walking is an excellent natural exercise that can help you stay healthy, live longer, control your weight and keep happy. It’s also a great way of discovering your local area and spending quality time with friends and family.

For adults, walking for a total of 30 minutes a day, five days a week, can help protect against many illnesses and conditions. It’s also a great way to fight stress and improve mental health. For children, walking can contribute to the 60 minutes of activity a day recommended by experts for a healthy childhood.

To get you and your family started, we’ve been running FREE walk4life programmes from Children’s Centres in Furness.

The current round of programmes is now finished. The programmes proved very popular and successful (see Project Report below). Hopefully we'll be able to run further programmes soon, in Furness as well as in other parts of the country -- watch this space.

In the meantime there is lots of information to help you go walking in Barrow and Dalton here.

Read more about the project in an article from walk magazine: Families on foot.

Read the September newsletter (PDF).

For more advice about getting your family walking, see the Walk4Life toolkit on the Change4Life website.

For more support to get you started walking, read hints and tips or order a Get Walking Pack at www.getwalking.org.uk.

Read about our launch event: The Big Barrow Bear Hunt!

Project report

The first round of programmes was researched by British Heart Foundation experts from Oxford and Loughborough universities to see how well the scheme worked and how much it benefited the participants. The researchers looked at questionnaires completed by walkers and spoke to walkers and staff in interviews and "focus groups". They have now produced a report that is very positive about the project.

They say: “This project has the potential to make a significant impact on the lives of beneficiaries...The partnership was successful in engaging parents with young families. This is a target audience who are often not engaged via other walking initiatives. [It was] well delivered and well received by participants...There is scope to implement the programme in Children’s Centres across the UK.”

View a summary presentation of the evaluation (PDF 400kB)
Download the full evaluation report (Large file -- PDF 6.8MB)

OUR CENTRES

DALTON
Dalton Children’s Centre, NHS clinic, Dowdale Grounds,
Dalton LA15 8AQ (Top of Nelson Road)
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HINDPOOL
Hindpool Children’s Centre, Hindpool Nursery School,
Bath Street, Barrow LA14 5TS
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NEWBARNS
Newbarns Children’s Centre, Newbarns School,
Rising Side, Barrow LA13 9ET
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ORMSGILL
Ormsgill Primary School, Millbank,
Barrow LA14 4AR
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WALNEY
Walney Children’s Centre, 120 Mill Lane,
Walney LA14 3NS
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SIGN UP FOR A PROGRAMME AND YOU GET…

• A Welcome to Walking session with activities for pre-school and primary children and hints and tips for adults.
• A series of family friendly led walks and other activities.
• Walking plans, storybooks, activity books and other information to help you and your family keep walking.
• Advice and support from our trained staff.

Need to know

• All families welcome, with children of all ages.
• All walks are easy, very short and child friendly. Most are suitable for pushchairs.
• No need to book – just turn up to the programme of your choice.
• Make sure you and your children are wearing comfortable shoes and are dressed for the outdoors and changes in the weather. We recommend an anorak or jacket, a spare top, hats and sunblock.
• Programmes provide four organised weekly sessions with led walks and other activities, then seven more weeks of informal and independent walking with the help of our plan, followed by a celebration event and walk in week 12.
• If you can’t make the first session, don’t worry – you’ll still be welcome on later sessions.
• If you know another family that might enjoy the programme, why not bring them along?

Furness Families Walk4Life is a Ramblers pilot project in partnership with Action for Children and supported by Walk England, funded by the Department of Health.