JOGG and Healthy Childcare work together on a healthy lifestyle

Launch of Healthy Childcare

Together with Karen van Drongelen from the Netherlands Nutrition Centre, Margien van Rooij from the RIVM coordinates the Healthy Childcare programme. Through Healthy Childcare, childcare organisations (daycare, childminding and out-of-school care) work structurally on children’s healthy lifestyles and the expertise of their staff. Van Rooij explains how the programme began in 2016. “The trigger for starting Healthy Childcare was the visible problems surrounding young people’s healthy lifestyles. The Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport said at the time: it is great that Healthy School is so successful, but why do we only start paying attention to a healthy lifestyle in children from the age of four? And the Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport asked: how can we make use of Healthy School’s successes for young children up to the age of four? At the RIVM, we were already involved in Healthy School, and we knew from scientific research that learning healthy habits at a young age is easier than unlearning bad habits later in life. We also saw that many childcare organisations were already doing quite a lot to promote a healthy lifestyle. Children eat and sleep there. This means that, as a childcare organisation, you are more closely involved in children’s development than a primary school is. Moreover, they already have a certain rhythm of physical activity, eating and sleeping.” What was still missing was coherence. “They were all separate activities with little vision behind them. If this is our vision, how do we translate it into the various things we offer? Looking at this structurally is the added value of the Healthy Childcare programme. In addition, the Netherlands Nutrition Centre, together with other thematic institutes, had developed lifestyle training for childcare professionals. Both initiatives came together beautifully in Healthy Childcare.

Cooperation with JOGG

Van Rooij talks about the cooperation with JOGG: “We came together because we share the same ambition, namely to ensure that young people are healthy. We can strengthen each other in this. As Healthy Childcare, we mainly work at national level, but we would like this ambition to also be visible locally. We also want to encourage municipalities to work with a Healthy School adviser, a Healthy Childcare coach and a JOGG coordinator. This cooperation gives us greater impact.”

In practice, Healthy Childcare and JOGG are already working together. For example, JOGG coordinators use information about the Healthy Childcare programme in their recommendations to childcare organisations. The two parties also jointly developed a visual discussion aid, which a JOGG coordinator can use to talk to a childcare organisation about a healthy lifestyle and Healthy Childcare.

Training Healthy Childcare coaches

Thanks to the Healthy Childcare programme, more than 1,300 childcare staff members have been trained as Healthy Childcare coaches. Van Rooij: “We offer them a train-the-trainer programme, through which the coach becomes the key contact for a healthy lifestyle within the organisation. The coach then gets to work training colleagues on healthy nutrition and children’s motor development, among other things.” Healthy Childcare advises coaches to cooperate with regional organisations, such as a JOGG coordinator. There are already good examples of such cooperation with JOGG in Tilburg and the northern part of North Holland, among other places. In the latter region, JOGG coordinators and childcare director and Healthy Childcare ambassador Marja Schmitz of Hoi Pipeloi childcare are actively encouraging childcare organisations to take part in the train-the-trainer programme. They also work together on and in all kinds of activities focused on children’s healthy lifestyles.

Promoting the Healthy Childcare train-the-trainer programme is producing results, because research shows that, proportionally, more Healthy Childcare coaches are trained in JOGG municipalities than in municipalities that are not part of JOGG. According to Van Rooij, this underlines the benefits of good cooperation between Healthy Childcare and JOGG.

Providing support and embedding the approach

In the coming period, in addition to training coaches, Healthy Childcare wants to focus more on support and embedding the approach. “You can train a Healthy Childcare coach, but that coach then needs to get started and continue doing so. In practice, coaches encounter problems. That is why we offer them workshops and peer supervision, and they can contact one of the Healthy Childcare Ambassadors. We would also like to consolidate the cooperation between childcare organisations and schools and partners such as JOGG. We hope that a movement will get under way to strengthen the local and regional network around the child. Ultimately, this will create an environment in which a child sees healthy habits all around them.”

Meanwhile, Healthy Childcare continues to develop. “We are considering adding sleep as a topic. We are also going to work on an e-learning course and want to give coaches more tools to stand their ground. We also want to hear from trainee coaches whether they succeed in putting their first actions and plans into practice within the childcare organisation. That is why we bring them together again after six to eight weeks. All these initiatives keep the programme moving, and together with coaches, JOGG and other organisations, we are working on Healthy Childcare.”

Healthy Childcare is an initiative of the Ministries of Health, Welfare and Sport and Social Affairs and Employment. National knowledge and research institutes work together within it, supported by sector and umbrella organisations. Coordination lies with RIVM Centre for Healthy Living and the Netherlands Nutrition Centre.