Features

Positive Relationships: Healthy Eating - Force of habit

The personal choices practitioners make about their food and the
messages they communicate to children as a result can have an impact on
a setting's success with nutrition. Karen Faux reports.

To effectively deliver a healthy eating policy in a nursery, all staff should ideally send out positive messages about food. While this means having a sound understanding of nutrition and a willingness to support a nursery's healthy ethos, does it also mean that staff need to eat healthily themselves?

Many settings would say yes. After all, staff are the ones who are on the frontline of supervising food and activities around it and if they have issues themselves, they can easily communicate negativity.

Having an effective food management policy and investing in continuous professional development for staff can help to ensure that all-important emotional buy-in from every individual in the setting. At Moss Bank Nursery in Merseyside, which is part of Portico Day Nurseries, staff have benefited from the setting achieving Healthy Early Years Status, awarded by St Helens Council.

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