Newham Community Nutrition Awards- Celebrating Success in the Early Years
On Friday 14th February 2020 we celebrated the fantastic work that’s taken place in early years settings over the last year! The Early Start Nutrition team and a host of guests honoured early year’s settings who are putting nutrition at the heart of their practice.
The event was an opportunity to see first hand how early year’s settings are supporting all children in Newham to have access to meals, snacks and drinks that are healthy, balanced and nutritious. Our event celebrated the achievements of early year’s staff who ensure children have the opportunity to learn about food, make healthy choices and create a positive environment to support readiness for school.
We were honoured to be joined on the night with special guests including Rokhsana Fiaz, Mayor London Borough Of Newham, Diane Rochford, Dental Wellness Trust, Phil Royal, APPG Fit and Healthy Childhood and Hazel Jones, Newham’s Infant Feeding Co-coordinator. Each of our guests showed their support to ensure Newham children reach their full potential. Our guests also presented awards to our highly commended and winning settings.
Awards were presented to early years settings and staff in the following categories:
- Nutrition Display Board of the Year
- Nutrition Activity of the Year
- Well-being Initiative of the Year
- Outstanding Baby Friendly Environment
- Practitioner of the Year- putting nutrition at the heart of their practice
- Menu of the Year
- Outstanding Nutrition Provision
Nutrition Display Board of the Year – Winner Announced
The Nutrition Display Board of the Year will promote key nutrition messages that support children, families and staff to learn about how to achieve a healthy and balanced diet. The display will promote simple evidence based nutrition messages that are easy for families to understand and build into their routine. The winning display will be colourful, interactive and engaging!
Highly Commended:
Amina Dhinbil, Plaistow Children’s Centre
Winner:
Beckton and Royal Docks Children’s Centre
Nutrition Activity of the Year – Winner Announced
The winning activity will provide children and/or families with a positive and enjoyable experience to learn about food. There should be clear learning about food objectives that are suitable for the age and ability of the children in the setting. Activities should encourage children to try a wide range of foods and include home learning links for families. Activities can range from gardening to cooking to education visits to supermarkets.
Highly Commended
Honey Kaur, Honey’s Childcare
Winner
Apple Tree (Obelele) Nursery
Well-being Initiative of the Year – Winner Announced
The winners of our well-being initiative of the year will be actively embedding activities into their settings routine. There should be a clear objective for the initiative and evidence that it is supporting children and/or families to make/ maintain a healthy lifestyle.
Highly Commended
Abida Bobat, St. Stephen’s Children’s Centre
Winner
Elzbieta Jankowska-Dunaj, Flower Girl Childcare Ltd
Outstanding Baby Friendly Environment – Winner Announced
Our Outstanding Baby Friendly Environment award winners will understand the importance of ensuring staff follow the UNICEF Baby Friendly principles around infant feeding and support families in safely feed their babies. You’ll have worked on developing your infant feeding policy, which supports families with feeding and developing close, loving relationships, ensuring that all babies get the best possible start in life. Staff actively use and signpost families to evidenced based information and support services. Staff working with children under 1 will have completed our Food and Nutrition for Infants training.
Highly Commended
Moksliukas Nursery
Winner
Canberra baby room, The Alphabet House Nursery School East Ham Branch
Practitioner of the Year- putting nutrition at the heart of their practice – Winner Announced
Our Practitioner of the Year will be someone who works hard to advocate, promote and support children and families to understand the importance of good food and nutrition. A staff member who has lead on the roll out of a nutrition initiative or someone who has supported individual families.
Highly Commended
Abida Botat, St. Stephen’s Children’s Centre
Winner
Koli Miah, Rebecca Cheetham Children’s Centre
Menu of the Year – Winner Announced
Our menu of the year will be awarded to the setting who plans their menus in line with the Eat Better Start Better voluntary food and drink guidelines. The menus will consider the cultural and dietary needs of children. We are looking for menus that include a variety of tastes, colours and textures of food.
Highly Commended
Early Start Education – Shrewsbury and Susan Lawrence
Winner
Little Amber Nursery
Outstanding Nutrition Provision- Winner Announced
Our final award of the night be was presented to the setting that puts nutrition at the heart of their practice.
This setting will ensure their children have access to meals, snacks and drinks that celebrate children’s cultural and dietary needs and lead the way with standards of excellence seen in their nutrition knowledge, quality of menus and support for children to learn about food in fun and creative ways.
Highly Commended
Elzbieta Jankowska-Dunaj, Flower Girl Childcare Ltd
Winner
Little Diamonds Nursery Ltd