Training Talk - Child obesity

With childhood obesity on the rise, practitioners are increasingly using preventive strategies. One is HENRY (Health Exercise Nutrition for the Really Young), a national programme used by the Whittington Hospital NHS Trust in North London. Oral health practitioner Kim Powell, who is based within the trust’s health visiting team, completed a two-day HENRY core training course and two-day group facilitation training in 2012. She says it changed her entire approach to working with parents.

HENRY practitioners trained Ms Powell at her London offices alongside nine colleagues. The course covered the subjects Ms Powell now delivers to parents, including healthy eating, parenting techniques and stress relief. The teaching was informal, with practitioners sitting in a circle. In the group facilitation training, the practitioners had to present part of the course as practice for future delivery.

Since training, Ms Powell has delivered 12 eight-week courses to parents. She begins her sessions with a 30-minute, healthy snack time. ‘We sit down together and eat, then play a game afterwards to encourage activity,’ says Ms Powell. ‘The parents role-model by sitting down and eating. We reward the children who come to sit and eat.’

HENRY taught the reward technique by asking trainees to reward each other with inexpensive tokens such as stickers. Ms Powell now uses the same system. ‘It seems a bit weird at first, but we reward each other like you would a child,’ she says. ‘We reward a nice comment, or if someone arrives on time.’

After snack time, children leave their parents to play in a separate room. Ms Powell encourages parents to share thoughts and ideas about the session’s discussion topic. She uses colourful HENRY resources, such as food charts explaining portion sizes, and a HENRY course book that the parents can keep.

‘At first I thought this approach wouldn’t work,’ says Ms Powell. ‘As a practitioner we’re so used to telling parents what to do. To stop and listen to the parents for a change was a bit of a challenge. But it really does work.’ Ms Powell says she now listens and tries to build parents’ confidence in her other oral health work. ‘Often the issue parents come with is not the real issue – you’ll find the underlying issues if you have this approach,’ she says.

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