Inner East Partnership & Vic Kids Eat Well
All kids deserve the opportunity for a healthy start in life.
Vic Kids Eat Well (VKEW) is the new Victorian state-wide program that supports schools, outside school hours care (OSHC), sports clubs, and a wide range of community organisations to offer healthier food and drink options. The Inner East Partnership (Access Health & Community, healthAbility and Link Health & Community) are taking an integrated approach to implement the program across the Inner East (Monash, Whitehorse, Manningham and Boroondara).
One of the main supports a setting receives when they register for VKEW is the assistance of a Health Promotion Officer. As VKEW registrations began to increase, the requirement for Community Health-Health Promotion (CHHP) support to be made available to all settings registered to VKEW across a municipality, posed a significant challenge for the agencies, given the significant amount of health promoter capacity this demands.
To address this challenge, the Partnership is adopting an integrated approach. Each of the three organisations has taken the lead in supporting one of the three settings (schools, OSHC and sports clubs) across the entire Inner East catchment. This is to address the challenges of limited health promotion capacity within each local government area. To further support this approach, a cross-organisational VKEW Practitioner Working Group has been established within the partnership to:
- leverage local expertise across all settings, and
- provide a platform for sharing ideas, challenges and solutions.
One strategy the Partnership has utilised to promote VKEW are roundtable events. In May 2022, Latrobe Community Health Service and Link Health & Community held the first VKEW roundtable event in Victoria.
This event was aimed at sporting clubs and was promoted across the Inner East region. Leaders from local sports clubs, health services and local councils came together to talk about increasing the healthy food and drink options they offer children. The event resulted in twelve attendees, plus a commendation by Cancer Council Victoria and the team at VKEW for the leadership approach taken to the promotion and support of this initiative.
This innovative partnership approach to supporting the VKEW program is already seeing progress. Within three months of promotion, the partnership has been able to support four OSHCs, two schools and six sports clubs to work towards their small and big bites. Without this integrated approach, these numbers would be much lower, due to Health Promotion capacity within their assigned portfolios.
A similar approach will be considered for the other settings in 2023. Noting that an equity lens will be used where possible and there are still significant challenges engaging schools.
Contact: Roshika Kumar, Latrobe Community Health Service, roshika.kumar@lchs.com.au
Website: Vic Kids Eat Well