A “sweets as treats” culture is contributing to Knowsley’s exceptionally high levels of childhood obesity, according to a senior children’s manager.
The comments were made by the chief executive of Merseyside Youth Association, Gill Bainbridge, at a meeting of Knowsley's children and families board tonight.
On the agenda was Knowsley’s high levels of obesity – with both children and adults experiencing some of the highest levels in the country.
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Presenting a report which details the extent of the borough’s obesity problem, assistant public health programme manager Jackie McMenamy said plans to tackle Knowsley’s healthy weight challenges have been “exacerbated by the pandemic.”
This led to a “slowing down” of some services which required face to face meetings, but many activities had also been “ongoing” during that time.
Although there have been delays in some specific healthy weight projects, according to Ms McMenamy in other areas, such as the borough’s early years programme HENRY, rolled out by Knowsley’s children’s centres, progress has been much more at pace.
Ms McMenamy said one of the challenges was around working with schools under pressure to encourage a “buy in” to adopting more healthy approaches.
Following a question by Merseyside Youth Association chief Gill Bainbridge, Ms McMenamy said: “We try very hard to engage with our schools and we’re making progress around that.
“We have one of the headteachers who’s really keen to work with us on this but ideally we would want that buy in across all of our schools.”
She added: “The schools have a very wide curriculum that they have to deliver so whilst there is PE and there are extra curricular activities going on and things like the ‘daily mile’ happening, I suppose is it also we can support parents also with outside of school as not everything will be done with school.”
Ms Bainbridge said she felt that there was a culture of “sweets as treats” both in and outside of schools that contributed to the problem.
She said: “It used to drive me mad when children were given hot chocolate and chocolate as a treat [in school]”
Ms Bainbridge also took issue with parents doing the same, saying: “You see parents, the first thing they do when they greet their child is not ask about their day but give them chocolate” as a “reward for going to school.”
She told of a family she was watching in the park at the weekend.
Ms Bainbridge said: “There was a little lad who was overweight playing on a swing and his mum was there and she went ‘oh come on we’re going to go now’ and he said ‘no I want to stay on the swings” and she said ‘oh no let’s have a chocolate.”
Ms Bainbridge said the boy said: “I don’t want it, I want to stay in the park’ adding: “It was mum, she just couldn’t be bothered being in the park any more.
“It’s some of those observations about how we can embed that healthier lifestyle as almost a cultural thing. I suppose the only thing we can control are our schools and youth centres and that.”
Ms McMenamy said sometimes the issue was parents not having the right utensils to create healthy meals. or knowing about access to healthy start vouchers to get access to fresh fruit and vegetables.
She added that the council was also looking at ways to deliver information about children with unhealthy weight to families in a ”softer” way to encourage more cooperation with working towards healthy living goals.
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