Updated Healthy Weight Health Nutrition resources

We are delighted to share updated Good Practice Points and Parent Tips, published in support of our updated Healthy Weight, Healthy Nutrition training programme.

Updated Parent Tips

(advice to share with parents and families)

Updated PT – Managing Food Allergies in children under 5 years (updated September 2019)
Updated PT – Introducing your Baby to Solid foods (updated September 2019)
Updated PT – How to help babies and children maintain a healthy weight (updated September 2019)
Updated PT – Vitamins for children (updated September 2019)
Updated PT – Helping your older child to eat well (updated September 2019)
Updated PT – How can I encourage my child to eat vegetables? (updated September 2019)

Updated GPPs

Please note that GPPs are available to iHV members only. Electronic versions of these updated Good Practice Points (providing up-to-date evidence and references for our members) are available to our members on the links below – do remember to sign in to access them:

Please note that GPPs are available to iHV members only.

If you’re not a member, please join us to get access to all of our resources.

The iHV is a self-funding charity – we can only be successful in our mission to strengthen health visiting practice if the health visiting profession and its supporters join us on our journey. We rely on our membership to develop new resources for our members.

So do join us now!

Updated GPPs on Healthy Weight, Healthy Nutrition

We are delighted to share three updated Good Practice Points (GPPs) in the Healthy Weight, Healthy Nutrition high impact area:

Complementary Feeding and Baby-led Weaning
Promoting a Healthy Infant and Toddler Diet
Helping the older child to eat well

Authored by Dr Helen Crawley, a registered public health nutritionist and dietician with over 30 years experience in human nutrition, research, policy development and teaching, these three GPPS have been updated to reflect updated evidence based on new research. They set out what health visitors need to know to support Healthy Weight and Healthy Nutrition.

They outline some practical measures along with up-to-date evidence and references.

GPP - Complementary Feeding and Baby-led Weaning

GPP - Promoting a Healthy Infant and Toddler Diet

GPP - Helping the older child to eat well

Please note that these GPPs are available to iHV members only.

If you’re not a member, please join us to get access to all of our resources.

So do join us now!

Day 2 of #ProudtobeaHV #HVweek

Today’s #HVWeek topic: Healthy weight and the family – how you impact on the information and advice given to families to help them make better choices.

Welcome back to national #HVweek

We have really enjoyed reading your contributions on yesterday’s theme and hearing about your plans for this week. National HV week presents a phenomenal opportunity for us to showcase the best of health visiting practice, to show our impact and to share examples of good practice with our colleagues and commissioners around the four UK regions. We really are #ProudtobeaHV.

Today’s theme focuses on Healthy Weight and the family. The last 12 months have seen us take to the road with a grant-funded programme of Healthy Weight, Healthy Nutrition Champions training, with the outcome of 300 Champions created across England and Northern Ireland.

Training

Our Healthy Weight, Healthy Nutrition training focuses on the very broad, ever-evolving and sometimes contradictory evidence base for practice around healthy weight using a life course approach from pre-conception onwards. Increasing health visitor confidence in the current evidence base around family nutritional health is central to supporting authoritative practice that will see health visitors working confidently alongside parents around their choices for their families.

e-learning

The associated Healthy Weight, Health Nutrition e-learning is free to access and is provided over 5 separate modules – why not complete a module today?

Go to Healthy Weight, Healthy Nutrition e-learning Module 1

Good Practice Points (for members only)

If you are a member, why not access our breastfeeding and infant feeding Good Practice Points (GPP)?

GPP - Successful breastfeeding - antenatal information

GPP - Successful breastfeeding - postnatal information

GPP - Complementary feeding and baby-led weaning

GPP - Promoting a healthy infant and toddler diet

GPP - Feeding the older child

Videos

For those short of time our videos are excellent, easy-view, short clips from national experts Dr Helen Crawley (First Steps Nutrition) and Liz Ginty (HV and Baby Friendly Initiative) talking about the value of health visitor input working alongside family to help them make healthy choices around infant feeding.

Video - Liz Ginty - Breastfeeding (Infant Feeding Advisor)

Video - Dr Helen Crawley - Healthy Weight, Healthy Nutrition

Parent Tips

We have a selection of top tips for parents on breastfeeding and infant feeding which we encourage you to share with your families:

PT - Benefits of breastfeeding and FAQs

PT - Common breastfeeding worries and problems

PT - Expressing and storing breast milk

PT - When your baby cries during feeds or has colic

PT - How to help if your baby has reflux

PT - Introduce your baby to solid foods

PT - How to prevent your child being overweight

PT - Feeding your older child

How can I encourage my child to eat vegetables

Please note that some of these resources are available to iHV members only.

If you’re not a member, please join us to get access to all of our resources.

So do join us now!

Healthy Weight Healthy Nutrition Champions training is coming to Northern Ireland

We are delighted to announce that we are taking the Healthy Weight Healthy Nutrition Champions training to Northern Ireland – as part of rolling out this highly successful training across the UK:

16/17 February 2017 in Belfast

This date, for Northern Ireland, is the first date confirmed in a series of training dates which will also include Wales and Scotland. So keep an eye out for further communications on dates.

For the full training schedule and more details

Another new date for Healthy Weight Healthy Nutrition Champions training

Further to demand a new date has been added to the Healthy Weight Healthy Nutrition Champions training schedule:

3/4 November 2016 – London

With some training sessions already successfully delivered, we now have limited availability on this fantastic Champions training for England in London, Guildford and Ipswich – so don’t miss out, book your place now.

For the full training schedule and more details

Building upon existing knowledge, we explore why good nutrition matters across the lifespan, the significance of supporting women to eat well during pregnancy, as well as how HVs can influence and promote optimal and responsive infant feeding practices. You will also have the opportunity to examine more complex issues of allergies, fussy feeding, safeguarding and nutrition, the relationship with activity levels and overweight and obesity.

Our Champions programme equips participants to take on leadership / special interest roles as well as cascading Healthy Weight Healthy Nutrition training updates to colleagues within their organisation. This is a cost-effective method of ensuring the workforce has access to up-to-date evidence-based knowledge and skills to support practice in this important public health subject area and additionally represents an excellent development opportunity for health visitors.

New dates added for Healthy Weight Healthy Nutrition Champions training

New dates have been added to the Healthy Weight Healthy Nutrition Champions training schedule:

1/2 December 2016 – Ipswich
15/16 December 2016 – Guildford

Utilising a range of delivery methods the training is highly interactive through its use of small and whole group discussion and activity underpinned by use of presentations, video clips and quizzes.

For the full training schedule and more details

New: Burdett Trust grant supports our Healthy Weight Healthy Nutrition e-learning Programme

We are pleased to launch a further e-learning programme to our expanding portfolio. This e-learning has been supported by a grant from the Burdett Trust. Healthy Weight Healthy Nutrition is one of the six Early Years High Impact Areas and a key public health issue, with health visitors having a central role in improving outcomes around family nutritional health across the life course.

These e-learning modules have been written to support the Champions training programme currently being rolled out across the UK, which is a comprehensive refresher for health visitors on the evidence base surrounding weight and nutrition. Evaluation of the training delivered to date has demonstrated that health visitors over-estimate the currency of their knowledge in this area. Additionally the subject is not a core area within initial health visitor training so there is wide variation in what is attained in training or CPD across the country.

Health visitors can now use these 5 online modules to update themselves. Our e-learning programmes are a valuable tool to support individual learning and CPD to underpin NMC revalidation.

Go to e-learning

Last bookings being taken for HWHN training in Taunton

The last bookings are being taken for great Healthy Weight Healthy Nutrition Champions training in Taunton – being held on 8 and 9 September.

We have already started to roll out this fantastic funded training for health visitors – and the feedback from the first sessions has been excellent.

This is a brand new UK-wide training programme, written by a national nutritional expert and endorsed by Public Health England and Health Education England, to create local expert health visitors within every organisation as “Champions” for Healthy Weight, Healthy Nutrition.

Do you have the attributes of an iHV Healthy Weight Healthy Nutrition Champion? Click on the link below to find out.

Find out more

Great start to iHV Healthy Weight Healthy Nutrition Champions training

How fitting that last week saw the start of the national roll out of the iHV Healthy Weight Healthy Nutrition Champions training during the national childhood obesity week (4-10 July 2016) in Sheffield.

The new Healthy Weight Healthy Nutrition Champions from Sheffield

Congratulations to our new Healthy Weight Healthy Nutrition Champions who completed the training last week. We look forward to hearing about your local roll out as you cascade and share your new knowledge with your colleagues.

The next Healthy Weight Healthy Nutrition Champions training will be at Birmingham City University this week and UCLAN on28/29 July. There are more dates around the UK see Healthy Weight Healthy Nutrition training page for further details.

The HWHN Champions training is aimed at HVs who have an interest in the subject and who are willing to become HWHN Champions and cascade this training to other HVs within their organisations.

Sara Patience talking about fussy eating on the iHV Health Weight Healthy Nutrition Champions training in Sheffield

This flexible training, written by Dr Helen Crawley a dietician and registered public health nutritionist, is designed to complement the work of HENRY and and provides a comprehensive overview of current research evidence policy drivers. It builds on existing health visiting skills and will enable practitioners to consolidate their existing knowledge and competencies and share and learn alongside like minded colleagues.

Group work at Sheffield Healthy Weight Health Nutrition Champions training

The training is led by Sara Patience, an experienced health visitor, who is also a registered nutritionist and author. Maggie Fisher an iHV Fellow and professional development officer and trainer with the iHV is supporting Sara with this training.

Creative and innovative ideas shared

iHV responds to Chief Medical Officer’s call to reduce maternal obesity

The new annual report from the Chief Medical Officer, ‘Health of the 51%: women’, highlights obesity as one of the biggest risks to women’s health, affecting all aspects of a woman’s life from birth, family planning, pregnancy and right through to menopause and later life.

Dr Cheryll Adams, Director of the Institute of Health Visiting (iHV), said: “The Institute is very much aware of the impact of being overweight on the physical and emotional wellbeing of mothers and their children – healthy weight, healthy nutrition being one of the Department of Health’s High Impact Areas for health visitors. To support this, the iHV is rolling out new Healthy Weight, Health Nutrition Champions Training for health visitors in the New Year. In addition, we have our new Ready Steady Mums community activity programme to get new mums together and become active with their children.”

Read the full press release