Healthy Families Cumbria Pledge
The Healthy Families Cumbria Pledge is an award that Early Years Providers across both Westmorland and Furness and Cumberland Authorities are encouraged to apply for.
Children in Cumbria will have the best possible start in life through a joined up approach between families and everyone who works with young children. The aim is to lead to an improvement in children's health and development which will show in Cumbria's National Child Measurement Programme (NCMP) and Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) data for 5 year olds.
In recent years, Cumbria data has demonstrated an increase in children who are overweight or obese and has been the worst local authority compared to our statistical neighbours.
The number of decayed, missing or filled teeth in 5 year olds in Cumbria is worse than the national average.
Cumbria's Public Health Annual Report 2017 states that 9 children in 100 have a diagnosable mental health disorder and schools report that many children entering reception class are not emotionally prepared.
Nationally only 9% of boys and 10% of girls aged between 2 to 4 years achieve the recommended physical activity guidelines for children aged under 5. It is further outlined that 85% of boys and 83% of girls are classified as having low activity levels ie less than 60 minutes per day.
The settings that have been awarded the pledge are:
- Fairfield Primary School
- Home From Home Nursery
- Howgill Family Centre
- Crosby On Eden C of E Primary School
- Family Action Allerdale 0 to 19 Child and Family Support Service
- Family Action Carlisle 0 to 19 Children and Family Support
- Family Action Copeland 0 to 19 Child and Family Support Service
- Grasslot Infant School
- Greystone Nursery
- Haverigg Nursery
- Hayton C of E Primary School
- Inglewood Community Nursery and Infant School
- Kingmoor Nursery and Infant School
- Little Jems Nursery
- Little Monkeys Day Nursery
- Mary Platt Methodist Preschool
- St Aiden's Day Nurseries
- The Manor Preschool Nursery
- Wiggonby C of E Primary school
- Bridekirk Dovenby C of E Primary School
- Lowmoor Preschool
- Woodend Country Childcare
- Poppies Childcare
Cumbria Children's Trust Board and Cumbria Health and Wellbeing Strategy have identified the following priorities for children and young people:
- Emotional health: equip schools and other settings with the tools they need to build resilience in children and young people
- Healthy weight: To reduce the rate of excess weight in 4 to 5 year olds from a baseline of 26% in 2017/18
The Healthy Families Pledge for Early Years will concentrate on the following areas:
- Healthy nutrition
- Physical Activity
- Emotional Health and Wellbeing
By taking part in the pledge you will be agreeing to promote these three areas with children and their families.
The second part of this document is a Workbook to help you work towards the Healthy Families Pledge.
The first page of the Workbook gives you the opportunity to think about what you are already doing in your setting and what else you could do.
Following this, there is a Healthy Families Cumbria Pledge overview for you to complete as you go along. This will help you keep track of your progress and achievements.
Expectations
What you need to do to be able to sign up to the pledge:
- Embed the Eat Healthy, Start Better or the Public Health England 'Example menus for early years settings in England, guidance and recipes guidelines' for all meals and snacks provided
- Support parents to provide healthy packed lunches
- Support parents with healthy eating at home.
- Have a healthy eating ethos
- Ensure policies and procedures promote healthy eating
- Ensure practitioners are positive role models
- Provide advice and guidance for families on the importance of oral health
- Help children meet the Chief Medical Officer guidelines of 180 minutes of activity a day
- Demonstrate how you support children's physical literacy within your setting. See the link to the Physical Literacy Framework for ideas and suggestions
- Support parents and carers to encourage their children to have an active lifestyle
- Ensure children have opportunities to take part in structured and unstructured physical activity and active play every day
- Strong Key person roles that foster strong, warm and supportive relationships. The importance of good attachments are recognised
- Setting has a strong emphasis on supporting children's Characteristics of Learning
- Supporting children's resilience and independence.
- Embed recognised approach, for example Leuven Scales, Empathy Dolls or Sustained Shared Thinking and Emotional Wellbeing (SSTEW) scales
- Healthy eating, nutrition and oral health
- Emotional health and well being
- Physical development and physical literacy.
- Eat Better Start Better.
- Emotional health and well being.
- Physical development and physical literacy.
- Add the Healthy Families Cumbria Pledge to your team meeting agenda.
- Consider whole setting approach to health and well being.
- Lead by example, ensure all team members support the campaign and put it into practice when in the setting, eg healthy lunches and snacks
- Have a setting challenge eg 1000 hours outside and ask practitioners to take part as well children and their families.
- Have a healthy families champion or PANCo in the setting.
- Reinforce the Pledge in progress checks and parent/carer meetings including settling in and induction.
- Visual packed lunch swaps display demonstrating how to swap to healthy packed lunch choices and include the cost. (Similar idea to the sugar swap displays).
- Supporting team wellbeing.
- Have a trained walk leader within the setting
- Take part in the Moving to Write programme
Support and promote relevant local and national campaigns including.
- Start4Life
- Change4Life
- Sugar Smart
- Smile4Life
- Every Mind Matters
- Safer sleep campaign (Lullaby Trust)
- ROSPA campaigns (Household cleaning products, blind cord safety, button batteries etc.)
You can sign up to receive campaign updates from Public Health England and can download and order campaign items, like posters and conversation starters.
