How Brad and Suzanne support families to build healthy habits

What does Hampshire Healthy Steps do? 

“Hampshire Healthy Steps is a six-session program that we deliver via in-person groups or online to families with children aged two to 12-years-old in different communities across Hampshire,” says Brad. “The programme covers five different areas: nutrition, oral health, sleep, physical activity, and the local community. 

“Typically, we work with families who are struggling with oral health, sleep, and nutrition, mostly. These could be families that might be finding it hard to afford groceries, for example, so we try and offer them advice and support to try and save them money.” 

What’s the biggest issue families are facing at the moment? 

“At the moment, the majority of the families we support are struggling financially,” Brad says. “Most of the families we support struggle to afford the cost of healthy foods, so we offer a variety of support and resources to try to help their money go further. For example, we have a bunch of different cheap recipe options that families can cook at home on our website. 

“We also offer support to parents to understand the nutritional needs of their two to five-year-olds and we can build them a cost-effective meal plan to help them out too,” he explains. 

“Families can face lots of challenges with food and nutrition, like children with strong food preferences and finding healthy meals that everybody will enjoy,” adds Suzanne. “That’s why we offer lots of resources to make it easier for families to have healthier and more relaxed mealtimes at home. We use lots of books that give some really great nutrition advice like how big portion sizes should be and how parents might present healthy options to their child to make the food more appealing,” she says. 

How important can interactive sessions be to engage parents and kids?  

“Typically, the families that are coming in do come in with younger children, so we need to make our sessions engaging for a younger age range,” Brad explains. “Getting the children to physically get involved in learning about things like how to eat healthily or how to brush their teeth helps to make the learning a bit easier and more fun too.” 

“We've had loads of fun with some families that have come into the library today,” Suzanne adds. “We've been showing them how to brush their teeth, talking about visiting the dentist, and also explaining how eating things like fruits and vegetables can help us grow and develop.” 

“We use a helpful puppet called Alan who meets the children, and we have props like felt fruit and vegetables that the kids can feed Alan. We also have the kids use real toothbrushes to clean Alan’s teeth and his tongue, which are really important to help them learn how to be healthy,” she explains. 

“Parents respond really well to our activities – I’ve had several parents come up to me at the end of a session to thank me for the information or to talk about continuing the learning with their children at home. Lots of the families we support come back again and again to different sessions and talk about the impact that we’ve had on their kids’ healthy habit development,” Suzanne says. 

“Families are always open to new ideas, especially hearing about things that they can make use of at home that aren't too labour-intensive or too costly. It's also really nice to have a space for families to come together and share their own ideas with each other. Quite often a conversation will get going around a certain topic and parents will share tips between them or will talk about the challenges they’ve faced and how they’ve overcome those challenges,” she says. 

How does your work help to support families to be healthier?  

“Our work makes learning about healthy habits more accessible than anything, because we're coming out to families rather than expecting families to come to us,” Suzanne says. “By setting up sessions in community spaces where families are already coming in to have fun, it makes it a lot easier for us to reach families with young children. Storytime at the library is a great place to catch families who might need more information but perhaps haven't even thought about it.”  

“Acknowledging to somebody that you're struggling with food and perhaps that you can't make ends meet and can't provide healthy, nutritious food is also something that most people wouldn't admit to – that’s why having these informal chats and sessions in the community can work so well to support families to get what they need without making appointments or sharing anything they don’t feel comfortable saying,” she says. 

“We also know that while health is incredibly important to all families, the needs of each family can be very different from one to another,” Suzanne explains. “A big part of our job is also making sure we’re constantly reviewing and adapting the resources we share to make sure they're fitting people's needs. If we’re able to keep offering support that’s relatable, then families are more likely to take that information in and make use of it in their day-to-day lives.”