After finishing two recent programmes working with Camden Health and Wellbeing Team and a new partnership with West London Zone to deliver the programme to Nursery and Reception children in West London, we are back at our desks planning the way forward.
It has been great to be back working with families and the programme has proved to be an enjoyable experience for both practitioners and participating families. The programme is a good example of co-creation, since our first sessions over 8 years ago we devised together, with the community helping to form the content of the programme. We sounded out participatory activities during our first programmes in Hertfordshire Children’s Centre as part of a randomized controlled trial and built on our model to suit the needs of participating families. Families, practitioners and project partners worked together to discover what was most enjoyable, the challenges faced by delivering in diverse settings and the individual challenges faced by the people we were working with. As the programme unfolded across Herts and into 8 new localities each area uncovered a different need and demanded we devise new solutions to help support families to a healthier future and allow more children to benefit from engaging in a multi-component programme.
Working in West London Zone and Camden we identified that for some families, access to outside spaces was limited with stairs to flats and broken lifts proving a barrier to enjoying time spent outside as a family. In these urban settings the music sessions helped by allowing
Our Director Julie Lanigan has been busy participating in conferences across the Country. Julie has given interesting and engaging presentations at the Food Active Conference in Manchester and the Food Matters Event in London – Julie’s presentations were well attended and well received with lots of questions and time for afterthought. It’s been great to network and hear about the fantastic work going on across the country to tackle childhood obesity through interventions, tackling online food marketing to children, urban design and commitment from industry. This growing problem really needs multiple partners and a multi-pronged approach to develop a solution, devised together for a healthier future.
If you are interested in working with us we are currently working to identify new partners moving forward and touching base with all partners to update them with our proposed plans. We are preparing funding applications to deliver Planet Munch and various partners have pledged to provide facilities and staff to run a small number of programmes (e.g. 10 in one year). This pledge in kind allows us to apply to the National Institute of Health Research for funding enabling TrimTots CIC to deliver the programme and conduct research. This greatly offset costs to partner
If you are interested in working with us please do not hesitate to get in touch email – j.lanigan@ich.ac.uk