First Steps Nutrition, the country’s leading early years public health nutrition charity, has shared their response to the Government Food Strategy published on 13 June 2022. The response has been sent to Sajid Javid, the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, and Chris Whitty, the Chief Medical Officer for England and warns that, without improving diets in the early years, the rising national tide of obesity will not be reversed. The response also sets out the charity’s concerns that the Food Strategy does not make explicit, or address, the food and nutrition needs and vulnerabilities of infants and young children, stating,

“We are pleased to finally see a ‘Food Strategy’ for England released, to “start the conversation” about how best to deliver “healthier, more home-grown and affordable diets for all…”. However, this is not the comprehensive strategy we were hoping for. In particular, we believe it is misleading to state it is applicable to all, because the food and nutrition needs of babies (aged 0-12 months old) are ignored and those of young children (aged 1- 5) are barely considered…”

The early years of life set the trajectory for future health; excess weight gain in infancy affects later child weight and once established, obesity is harder to reverse. The Government recognises this and has set a target to reduce obesity prevalence by half by 2030 – but unless the nutritional needs of babies and young children are addressed, this target will not be achieved. Over 14% of children who started school in England in 2020 were already living with obesity, and among those from the most deprived households, the prevalence was 20.3%.

The charity also raises concerns that the Food Strategy pays disproportionate attention to individuals’ food choices in an environment in which families are not enabled to eat well – and this includes support to breastfeed.

To enable more children to maintain a healthy weight as they grow, First Steps Nutrition set out some key recommendations for the Government in their report published in May 2021: Enabling children to be a healthy weight. This contained 7 priority recommendations for babies and young children:

  1. Invest in leadership and strategy on maternal, infant and young child nutrition
  2. Collect data on infant and young child feeding practices and ensure better measurement and population surveillance of nutritional status in the early years
  3. Invest in universal breastfeeding support
  4. Strengthen and enforce regulations on the composition, labelling and marketing of formula and commercially-produced foods and drinks aimed at infants and young children
  5. Protect and expand universal health visiting services
  6. Review and refresh the Healthy Start scheme & increase the payment value
  7. Make food and drink standards in early years settings mandatory

The iHV is delighted to see that the recommendation to ‘Protect and expand universal health visiting services’ has been included. The response highlights the central role that health visitors play in enabling families and their babies and young children to eat well, stating:

“Statutory family support services need to be made fit for purpose if we are to stem the rising tide of obesity. Babies and children under two are the most vulnerable of all our children to the consequences of inadequate nutrition, and are also least likely to have engagement with public services. Health visitor numbers have been decimated since health visiting was transferred to local authority commissioning, and yet, alongside GPs, these specialist community public health nurses are often the only professionals who have contact with babies and young children and their families.”

The Healthy Child Programme sets out how health visitors can work with parents from preconception, through pregnancy and to their child starting school. Health visitors are therefore uniquely placed to support families with healthy weight and nutrition and identify children at risk of obesity. The evidence is clear that families are more likely to engage in this topic if they have a trusted relationship with a practitioner who is able to build on their strengths and support them to be in control of the things that matter to them and help them stay healthy– it takes skill to do this work well because obesity is a very sensitive topic. To achieve this, we need more health visitors, and a service built around relationships through continuity of care with an increased number of universal contacts for all families, and targeted support when needed.

The iHV welcomes this response from First Steps Nutrition and supports its recommendations. We would like to extend our heartfelt thanks to the team at First Steps Nutrition for continuing to advocate for better services and support for babies, young children and families, and also for their ongoing support of health visiting.

 

Thank you – and we look forward to continuing to work with you!

 

 

Public Health England would like to understand parents’ views and experiences of healthy weight or healthy lifestyle services for children and families in their local area.

text about a survey

As part of a one-year programme, some local councils have been awarded new funding to increase their provision of healthy weight or healthy lifestyle services for children and families. For example, support to eat healthier and be more physically active which might include a referral to a local programme or group. Areas were selected following a competitive application process.

A short online survey has been developed to capture parents’ views of existing services in local areas to inform future investment.

Calling all HVs, please share the link with parents who might be happy to help with this. Please share attached information sheet and the link.

Learning from this survey will help improve services to ensure that all children have an opportunity to be healthy, no matter where they live.

Unfortunately there is a tight time line to generate and analyse results, as the insights are intended to feed into the upcoming bidding process for this year’s Spending Review – so responses are needed by Friday 30 July .

 

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 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!

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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.


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.

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!

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Public Health England (PHE) has published a suite of resources focused on promoting a healthier weight for children, young people and families – a set of training tools providing evidence-based healthy weight messages for health and social care professionals to share.

These resources are intended to support health and care professionals to be consistent and provide a core set of healthy weight messages throughout the life course. This suite of resources is part of Public Health England’s All Our Health ‘call to action’ for health and care professionals. Resources can be accessed here and include:

  • Consistent messaging infographics: For use in practice. Each infographic highlights the key evidence-based healthy weight messages for specific age or target groups.
  • Consistent messaging slide sets: The aim of these slides is to be used as a training tool to inform workforce development.  It provides detailed evidence-based healthy weight messages from preconception through to age 18 years. It includes links to a range of useful free resources including e-learning and guidance documents.
  • Child obesity animation: This animation demonstrates for all health and care professionals their vital role in supporting children, young people and families to maintain a healthier weight to prevent and reduce childhood obesity, from pregnancy through to the transition to adulthood.

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?

Good Practice Points (for members only)

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

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.

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:


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.

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!

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Further to demand, we are delighted to announce a new London date for the Healthy Weight Healthy Nutrition Champions training schedule:

  • 23/24 March 2017 – London

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.