Healthy incentive scheme in the Irish full-day-care pre-school setting

Abstract

A pre-school offering a full-day-care service provides for children aged 0-5 years for more than 4 h/d. Researchers have called for studies that will provide an understanding of nutrition and physical activity practices in this setting. Obesity prevention in pre-schools, through the development of healthy associations with food and health-related practices, has been advocated. While guidelines for the promotion of best nutrition and health-related practice in the early years' setting exist in a number of jurisdictions, associated regulations have been noted to be poor, with the environment of the child-care facility mainly evaluated for safety. Much cross-sectional research outlines poor nutrition and physical activity practice in this setting. However, there are few published environmental and policy-level interventions targeting the child-care provider with, to our knowledge, no evidence of such interventions in Ireland. The aim of the present paper is to review international guidelines and recommendations relating to health promotion best practice in the pre-school setting: service and resource provision; food service and food availability; and the role and involvement of parents in pre-schools. Intervention programmes and assessment tools available to measure such practice are outlined; and insight is provided into an intervention scheme, formulated from available best practice, that was introduced into the Irish full-daycare pre-school setting.

Improving the implementation of nutrition guidelines in childcare centres improves child dietary intake: findings of a randomised trial of an implementation intervention

“…Nevertheless, improvements in food provision were achieved. The magnitudes of improvements in implementation of menus compliant with four of six individual food groups (fruit, meat and alternatives, dairy, discretionary) achieved by intervention services (21•5 % for fruit; 25•2 % for meat and alternatives; 22•5 % for dairy; 50•0 % for discretionary) were somewhat similar to yet slightly lower than those reported among trials using similar implementation strategies in childcare services to improve menus (40-68 %) (13,14,46,47) . The effect sizes were also similar to those reported in trials of implementation strategies in schools to improve the availability of healthy foods (25-42 %) (46,48) .…”

“…Few trials, however, have been conducted to assess how to best support the implementation of nutrition guidelines in this setting. A recent Cochrane review (2017) found only two randomised trials of interventions targeting the implementation of dietary guidelines (13,14) . While both studies demonstrate that implementation strategies such as staff professional development and ongoing support may be effective at improving food provision, neither study measured the impact of improving food provision on child dietary intake.…”

Use of Food Practices by Childcare Staff and the Association with Dietary Intake of Children at Childcare

“…Differences between children’s dietary intake can be partially attributed to the childcare center the child is attending [ 16 ]. In view of the increasing use of childcare, various authors have called for increased attention for the influence of childcare practices on children’s dietary intake (e.g., [ 10 , 17 , 18 ]). An important social environmental influence on children’s dietary intake at childcare is staff behavior.…”

The Child-care Food and Activity Practices Questionnaire (CFAPQ): development and first validation steps

“…The online supplementary material, Supplemental Table 5 shows the final CFAPQ. With regard to correlations between the CFAPQ and child-care staff's background characteristics, younger child-care staff scored higher on the activity-related scale Going outdoors (A-GO) than older staff (18)(19)(20)(21)(22)(23)(24)(25) n 116. Factors are labelled as follows: A-MOD, activity-related Modelling; A-PC, activity-related Psychological control; A-PST, activity-related Promote screen time; A-T/AS, activity-related Teaching/Autonomy support; A-GO, Activity-related Going outdoors.…”