Providing training and support to parents and early childcare providers on all aspects of food, healthy eating and food safety, Shirley Hawkes, Operation Manager for Early Years, talks about food allergen training in the early childcare sector in Northern Ireland.
The role of early childhood educators and food safety management are now undeniably linked. While early educators are being trained to teach and protect young children, one agency based in Northern Ireland (NI) saw a real need to introduce food management and allergy training to bene t not just children but their parents and practitioners as well. Established in 1965, Early Years aims to promote high quality childcare for children aged 0-12 years and their families in NI.
When Operation Manager Shirley Hawkes learned of the ‘Little Bites’ initiative in the Republic of Ireland (ROI), she reached out to safefood for guidance in adopting a similar approach in NI.
The Little Bites programme, originally created as a partnership in the ROI between safefood and Early Childhood Ireland, is a website offering insight and educational resources to parents and early childhood sector workers on a range of topics from healthy eating guidelines, to promoting food safety management for young children.
One area that needed urgent attention in NI was the lack of food safety and food allergen training for anyone in the childcare sector. With this realisation, and after conducting research, Shirley and her team in Early Years decided to adopt the idea of a Little Bites programme for NI.
“We had recently been out on the ground working with the sector and through focus groups, audits and discussions, we found people were struggling to get relevant information,” Shirley explains. After analysing feedback from the groups and surveys, the team in Early Years uncovered a worrying trend of childcare sector workers being forced to go online to source information without guidance. “They weren’t sure what the source was, or where it was coming from. We thought it would be very good to get a one- stop shop so that we could direct our membership and so that we could be assured that they were getting the right information from the right agency.”
As well as providing health guidelines and healthy eating campaigns, the Little Bites website offers information on nutrition, food hygiene, food allergies, intolerances, teaching and minimum standards for playgroups and daycares. It also provides training resources in nutrition and food hypersensitivity, which has not been widely available in NI until now.
Food hypersensitivities are essentially food allergy, food intolerance and coeliac disease. The symptoms can range from mild (such as stomach upset) to severe (such as shock or severe breathing dif culties), particularly in the case of severe food allergies. These are frequently diagnosed in early childhood and this training helps the Early Years staff manage food allergens and accommodate children with food hypersensitivities in their care.
Shirley explains how Early Years worked closely with safefood and pediatric dietician Ruth Charles, to develop both the content of the website and on-the-ground training. “The information was rolled out by safefood and Early Years over ten training sessions across NI.
“Over 350 frontline Early Years staff received the training, and this was across preschool, daycare, afterschools and schools. “The training provided aimed to ensure there was greater knowledge and understanding of food allergies and staff were also trained to know what to do in an emergency.” Another bene t to the training was that staff were supported on how to work with parents and children, as well as writing policies in relation to food allergens. Speaking about the uptake in training, Shirley re ects on the challenges facing the early childhood sector when it comes to food safety, training and management: “Up until now, the main concern was the lack of training or knowledge. We were not receiving this from local level or from trust level and only that safefood came along we wouldn’t have it at all. It’s now up to us to keep this going and keep the training in practice”.
What is Little Bites?
The Little Bites website was originally developed as a one- stop-shop for food safety, food allergen and healthy eating advice for all early childcare providers in the Republic of Ireland. The site is a collaboration between safefood and Early Childhood Ireland. Early Years recently adapted the programme as part of a training series for frontline workers in the early childhood sector in Northern Ireland.
About Shirley
Hobbies/Interests: Getting more active with my three children who are between the ages of 8-13. I do 5k runs, colour runs and park runs with my family.
Favourite Food: Coming from a farming community, I think it’s much more about the meat and veg rather than salads. There’s nothing better than a Sunday roast.
Comments