How the fight against obesity starts early

Project
Healthy Early Years

Funding
Funding for 2012/13 consists of £49,600 from NHS East London and £2,000 plus in-kind support from Tower Hamlets Council

Purpose
To reduce childhood obesity and improve the physical and emotional health of young children

Background
Childhood obesity levels in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets were among the highest in England, with 13.3 per cent ?of reception-aged children and 23 per cent of year 6 pupils classed as obese in the academic year 2009/10. As part of the Healthy Borough programme, Tower Hamlets Council’s early years service teamed up with the local primary care trust to design a scheme using early years settings to promote healthy living.

Action
The partners devised an accreditation scheme, now in its fourth year, which sees childcare settings, playgroups, schools, childminders, children’s centres and libraries attempting to achieve Healthy Early Years status. They are assessed in five areas: healthy eating, oral health, emotional wellbeing, physical development and communication.

Settings are given an audit tool to gauge how they are doing against criteria such as providing healthy meals and snacks, alongside practical examples of how settings could meet those goals. Staff are given training and experts including a dietitian and oral health specialist are on hand to give advice. Assessments are carried out by a member of the early years team and an officer from NHS East London.

The project is funded up to March 2013 and other sources of funding are being explored to extend it to more settings.

Outcome
Sixty settings have so far achieved the accreditation. All have made changes to ensure menus are balanced and have a regularly monitored food policy for under-fives. The audit tool found 76 per cent of settings needed to create more opportunities for children to undertake physical activity. Play areas have been introduced where children can easily move from indoors to outdoors and children are taken to local parks. Eighty-three per cent of settings say they are more confident in supporting children’s physical play.

One setting used Leuven wellbeing and involvement scales to observe children aged 18 to 24 months at a meal time with most showing low or medium scores. But changes to the routine, which included encouraging children to serve themselves, led to improvement, with all scoring medium or high about 10 weeks later.

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