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Good health is one of the most important determinants of a child’s life chances. All professionals working in the foundation years need to be involved in promoting and encouraging children’s healthy development.

The Healthy Child Programme

The Healthy Child Programme is the National Health Service’s framework for provision in the foundation years. It consists of a mixed approach of preventative programmes for all children and families with targeted and additional support to meet identified needs.

Health visitors deliver the programme, which is being made available to all families. It is evidence based and the interventions within it, such as vaccines and immunisations, tests and screening programmes, help drive up public health across the board.

The government is currently introducing a new model for health visiting services which will strengthen the provision of the healthy child programme across England. The model will bring improved access and time with families, providing services where it best suits the family – at home, in health settings including GP surgeries, in Sure Start Children’s Centre as well as other non-traditional settings.

Families need different levels of service and may need different services at different times. This is reflected in the new service model, which has five key areas where health visiting services will have a major role:

• Interactions at community level: building capacity and using that capacity to improve health outcomes and leading the healthy child programme for a population.
• Universal services for all families: Building strong relationships in pregnancy and early weeks and planning future contact with families, including being the lead professional for the healthy child programme for individual families.
• Additional services that any family may need some of the time (i.e. episodic for a specific health problem): for example, care packages for maternal mental health, or a baby/toddler sleep problem where the health visitor may provide support, delegate or refer.
• Additional services for families requiring ongoing extra support for a range of vulnerabilities or special needs: for example, families at social disadvantage or families who have a child with a disability.
• Health contribution in high intensity multi-agency services for families where there are safeguarding issues.

The rollout of this new health visiting service will be helped by the addition of 4,200 more health visitors by 2015.

Family Nurse Partnership

In a growing number of areas across the country the Family Nurse Partnership programme is being offered to first time disadvantaged mothers, giving intensive, structured support by specially trained nurses, and improving the outcomes of the most vulnerable families.

Quality provision is typified through partnership working between health and education professionals on identifying and responding to needs as early as possible in order to have an impact on outcomes.

Midwives and health visiting teams

Children’s health development begins in pregnancy and it is the responsibility of midwives to assess the health and social care needs of mums by the twelfth week of pregnancy. The midwife will co-ordinate the support of other professionals as needed to support the mum and family as required.

Midwives and health visitors have a focus on promoting positive parenting and good parent–child attachments and relationships as well as ensuring healthy development.

Reflective questions:

Eat Better, Start Better project

This project from the School Food Trust is all about helping young children to eat well by working with families and everyone involved in early years health and education.

The work is commissioned by the Department for Education with support from its Voluntary and Community Sector Grant.

The Eat Better, Start Better project involves:

• Development of new voluntary ‘Food and Drink Guidelines for Early Years Settings in England: A Practical Guide’. These guidelines will be available for all early years settings across England, along with practical resources and tools such as menus and recipes, portion size information, checklists and an early years code of practice for food and drink.
• A comprehensive training package. Two courses will be piloted in five local authority areas between November 2011 and March 2012. One course is for early years and health professionals in local authorities and Primary Care Trusts to help them support settings in using the voluntary guidelines and to help make sure that the guidelines are working well. The second course is for early years practitioners, to help them to understand the guidelines and how to run healthy cooking sessions with families.

Log on to the School Food Trust website for updates on the Eat Better, Start programme and on the local authorities taking part in the School Food Trust pilot.

Physical activity guidelines

In July 2011 the UK Governments published new physical activity guidelines and for the first time these included guidelines specifically for the under 5s. The British Heart Foundation National Centre for Physical Activity and Health (BHFNC) has produced two information booklets which are designed to give early years practitioners and health professionals help with using these guidelines effectively and to provide practical tips.

In recognition of the emerging evidence supporting the promotion of physical activity in the early years, the BHFNC has also produced an evidence briefing, which is designed for professionals who require a detailed review of the evidence base available for physical activity and the early years.

Information is included on:

• Physical and psychological health outcomes of physical activity
• Factors influencing physical activity
• Current levels of physical activity
• Increasing levels of physical activity
• Measuring physical activity
• Public health guidelines for physical activity
• Implications for practice.

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