We had such a fun time working on this short video to showcase the fantastic early years partnership work happening in East Sussex over the past 4 years. A huge thank you to all the settings that took part; staff, pupils and parents – you are all stars, and we hope you are all as proud of the outcome as we are.
Since 2015, almost 190 early years settings across East Sussex have participated in the Early Years PhunkyFoods programme, with approximately 260 early years practitioners having participated in a PhunkyFoods training course. The programme has been funded by East Sussex Public Health (and by NHS Eastbourne, Hailsham and Seaford Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) and NHS Hastings and Rother CCG as part of the 2016/17 Nursery Grants Programme).
Some summary findings from the partnership included:
- Post the training, an incredible 97% of practitioners have reported an increase in their confidence to deliver key healthy lifestyle messages for early years children.
- As part of an annual evaluation survey, 94% of active settings who responded reported an increase in delivery of key healthy lifestyle messages in their setting as a result of participating in the PhunkyFoods Programme.
- 88% of settings responding to the survey also stated that they believed that the implementation of the PhunkyFoods Programme had had a positive impact on improving healthy eating behaviours in their children, and have provided a range of observational and anecdotal reports to evidence this change.
- 71% of settings responding to the annual survey agreed that the PhunkyFoods Programme had made it easier for them to engage with parents and extended families around the healthy lifestyles agenda
- Parental reports of their child’s typical food and drink consumption were also collected at baseline and follow up, with small but positive improvements in key dietary behaviours observed as part of the evaluation follow up. The largest change seen was in parental reports of their child’s fruit and vegetable consumption, with parents reporting an overall increase of 1.5 extra eating occasions of fruit and vegetables per day.