Healthy eating and healthy lifestyles support parents to keep their children healthy. From the age of 4-6 months the health visiting team - health visitors, community nurses and community nursery nurses support parents with health eating tips and advice at the early stage of a child’s development. Working together with parents at an early age helps to support preventing children later in life being above their body mass index (Public Health Profile 2017/2018). The health visiting team works with school nurses who measure reception children’s height and weight at the reception age and provide support to parents and families via the HENRY programme. 

It was reported within the public health profile for 2018 that there were high levels of children in year 6 who had body mass index’s above the national England expectation. To prevent this happening in the future early intervention with the support of parents is paramount.

Your health visitor will discuss your child’s diet and importance of nutrition at each contact. Please refer to the infant feeding page for information on breastfeeding and introducing solids.