None listed
Conditions
Brief summary
Childcare centres represent a promising setting for interventions to improve the dietary behaviours of children as they provide broad reach to a large number of children and opportunities to be exposed to a range of nutrition promoting practices. While nutrition guidelines recommend that childcare centres provides food consistent with dietary guidelines, the impact of improving childcare food service environment on children’s diet in care has not been previously quantified. Previous childcare-based interventions have largely examined the modification of food environments in conjunction with other components which limits the ability to assess the isolated impact of improving food environment and availability on child behaviour. This study aims to assess the effect of an intervention to improve childcare service menus to comply with National nutrition guidelines. The intervention will target childcare service managers and cooks. We hypothesise the intervention will positively impact on service menus and child food intake.
Interventions
An intervention to improve childcare service implementation of nutrition guidelines (i.e. approximately 50% of serves as specified by the Australian dietary guidelines) will be delivered to eligible long day care centres over six months. The intervention will primarily target childcare service managers and service cooks. Strategy selection will be guided by the theoretical domains framework and consist of the following implementation strategies:
1. Provision of staff training: Service managers
An intervention to improve childcare service implementation of nutrition guidelines (i.e. approximately 50% of serves as specified by the Australian dietary guidelines) will be delivered to eligible long day care centres over six months. The intervention will primarily target childcare service managers and service cooks. Strategy selection will be guided by the theoretical domains framework and consist of the following implementation strategies: 1. Provision of staff training: Service managers and service cooks will be provided with a one-day workshop. The workshop will be delivered by experienced dietitians and health promotion staff and focus on improving skills and knowledge related to menu planning. 2. Provision of resources: A resource pack will be provided to all intervention services. The pack will include the Caring for Children resource, menu planning checklists and recipe ideas. The Caring for children resource, developed by the NSW Ministry of health and summarises best practice nutrition guidelines for the sector and has a focus on menu planning. 3. Ongoing support: An implementation support officer will be allocated to each intervention service. Two face-to-face contacts (duration 1-2 hours), will be provided to intervention services 1 month and 3 months following the menu planning workshop. During the support contacts the service manager and service cook will receive expert advice and support from their allocated support officer to facilitate the implementation of nutrition guidelines. 4. Audit and feedback: Menus of intervention services will be assessed for compliance by a dietitian and feedback provided to implementation support officers at two time points (baseline and 4 months). The implementation support officer will then distribute the feedback to intervention services. 5. Securing executive support: A memorandum of understanding (MOU) will be signed by the implementation support officer, the service manager and the service cook. Intervention service managers will be encouraged provide support and endorse the adherence of nutrition guidelines to all other staff within their service.
Sponsors
Hunter New England Population Health
Study design
Allocation
Randomised controlled trial
Intervention model
Parallel
Primary purpose
Prevention
Masking
Blinded (masking used) (Outcomes Assessor)
Eligibility
Sex/Gender
All
Age
18 Years to No maximum
Healthy volunteers
Yes
Inclusion criteria
Long Day Care Services: For a service to be eligible, it will be located within the Hunter and New England region of NSW Australia, provide all meals (at least one main meal and two mid-meals) to children while they are in care, and open for at least 8 hours per day. Services must conduct menu planning processes internally (ie, services do not out-source menu planning)
Exclusion criteria
Long Day Care Services: Services that do not prepare and provide meals to children onsite or do not have a cook with some responsibility for menu planning will be excluded from the study. Further, services catering exclusively for children requiring specialist care, mobile preschools and family day care centres will also be excluded from the study
Outcome results
None listed