Nottinghamshire County Council plans to build on their broader whole system approach around the community food environment, to develop food skills, access and support for families with children in the early years.
The Childhood Obesity Trailblazer Programme is funded by the Department of Health and Social Care and administered by the Local Government Association. Public Health England also providing expert support and advice.
Nottinghamshire County Council plans to build on their broader whole system approach around the community food environment, to develop food skills, access and support for families with children in the early years.
Progress
- Discussions started with County Food Enterprise (offer food at home service for older and vulnerable citizens in Notts) to use their supply chain to deliver food to childminders
- Continued development of FOOD club intervention across the county. 3 more clubs opened in Sutton in Ashfield, Beeston and Kirkby in Ashfield
- Further scoping of Children’s Kitchen and Community food hub concept using the expertise from Feeding Bristol around the Children’s Kitchen idea and Food For life around their Community Food Hub model.
- Delivered presentation about evaluation approach at the South East OHID Symposium
- Healthy Start - webinars taking place on Apr 26th & 27th, focusing on early years and community
Challenges
- 3 online courses for EY practitioners was released by Food for Life to Notts
- Producing ‘jargon free’ messaging for partners not involved with Trailblazer work
- Stigma attached to Healthy Start vouchers - looking at communications to support positive messaging
- Working closely with Elected Members whose capacity is reduced
Learnings
- Early years practitioners and childminders are keen to be involved in the COTP work
- Interviewees felt that a major enabler for FOOD club success has been partnership working
- Language used to discuss the programme needs to be relevant and adapted to the audience
Next steps
- Continue to work with local delivery partner on the next steps of the Healthier@Home meal kit concept, and develop the approach with partners
- Piloting community food hub and children’s kitchen
- Deliver more FOOD clubs as per plan
- Healthy Start national promotional materials to be released and shared widely early in 2022, raising awareness of the digital scheme
- Deliver two Healthy Start webinars to raise awareness and discuss how it can be embedded into systems and processes
- Continue work with evaluation partner to delivery evaluation framework