A West Coast Primary School has taken steps to ensure their tamariki and their whānau have the opportunity to make positive changes in their everyday lives for better health and wellbeing. 

The goal is to create a healthier community where children and their families have the understanding, tools, and knowledge to build a life in which they thrive.

Children who exercise regularly and eat a healthy diet, are more likely to perform better academically, feel better about themselves, their bodies and their abilities, and cope with stress and regulate their emotions better.

Developing a good physical foundation from a young age includes healthy bone mass and density, which will reduce the risk of developing bone-related diseases such as osteoporosis later in life.

But just as important as exercise, is nutrition, which is essential during childhood, as it is a time of rapid growth, development, and activity. Childhood is also a vital time for healthy tooth development and prevention of decay. General eating habits and patterns are formed in the first few years of life.

In 2021 Cobden Primary School signed up to be part of the West Coast Primary Health Organisation’s Active Families Pilot School Programme.

As part of this free support service, the Active Families West Coast Team work alongside local families to develop goals to support positive behaviour change regarding increased physical activity and nutrition support. The focus is about developing behaviour change that supports health over the long term.

Usually, to be referred to the Active Families Programme, a child must meet the following criteria:

•    They are under 12 years old
•    Would benefit from physical activity
•    The child or family has unhealthy eating behaviours
•    Has family/whānau support
•    The family understands what Active Families is and is keen for the family to participate in the programme

In this case however, every child in the school (and their family/whānau) was given the opportunity to participate. There were 41tamariki who chose to participate (out of 87 children).

“Cobden School was chosen to offer the programme to as it is a lower decile school with many vulnerable families and has a higher attrition of Māori/Pacifica whānau. We thought if we could pilot a programme with the school we could learn, adapt, make improvements, and offer it to other lower decile schools as well. Of key importance was stakeholder engagement and consumer codesign and we thought working with a school would help us with that. It was important to learn from them what they need and seek to support that,” says West Coast Primary Health Organisation Clinical Manager, Pauline Ansley.

Every child that opted to participate in the programme was given a ‘Movement Passport’ which includes activities for the children to tick off each week. Each activity features a physical activity, play, nutrition, or social component which encourages the child to take a positive step for their everyday health and hauora. Some of these activities include going for a walk on the beach with their family, helping the teacher set up equipment for fitness, making their sleeping area a screen-free zone, packing at least one piece of fruit in their lunchbox each day, and eating together as a family at least three times per week.

At the conclusion of the programme, a prize giving was held to celebrate the children and families that took part in the initiative.

“All 41 children received an Active Families water bottle, a set of colour pencils and a certificate. On top of this, the 20 children who returned their books received some globe socks and the six children who showed a high level of engagement in their journals for the activities received the top prizes which were donations from our local community businesses.

“I love the looks on the faces of the children. They look happy and proud,” adds Ansley.

In a post-programme survey sent out to parents, feedback was generally positive with one parent commenting, “Fun to tick off what they had done, good ideas for family activities.” 

With another adding, “Think it’s great but need to get buy in from the parents at the start so they can encourage it a bit more. My child won a prize of a slow cooker and was absolutely wrapped. He is often now asking for extra healthy lunches.”

At the conclusion of the programme the tamariki and their whānau were all invited to join the Active Families Programme if they wish to continue their health journey.

In 2022, Cobden School has also signed up to Sport New Zealand’s Healthy Active Learning initiative which aims to enhance the wellbeing of our children through quality physical activity, play and physical education.

This is another positive step for the school as they look to further provide quality play, sport, physical activity, and nutritional opportunities for their tamariki. 

Find out more about Active Families - Click here 

Article added: Thursday 20 January 2022