| The Dundee East MSP said she was not going to “beat NHS Tayside over the head with a stick” over its slow progress in meeting childhood obesity targets and instead urged families to take advantage of weight reduction programmes.
She said families were missing the chance to make life-changing improvements in the lives of their overweight youngsters.
Two years into a three-year project that aimed to reach 440 overweight kids, NHS Tayside has intervened in just 33 cases.
Tayside is not alone in finding it difficult to engage families in reducing childhood obesity — NHS Fife has made 106 interventions (target 414) and other boards are also struggling.
Ms Robison said the sensitive nature of the project explained why health workers found it hard to enlist families in the fight against flab.
“It’s quite a difficult target for health boards to meet because you have to have the willingness of families to take part in the programme,” she said.
“Part of the difficulty is that families don’t want to think that their children are so overweight that they need help.
“You have to be sensitive about how you raise the issues. But I would encourage parents to take up the opportunities that are being offered.
“It’s one of the best things to do for a child. Some programmes offer whole family support so that eating habits are improved in the home.
“I think it’s a big opportunity for families to do something really life-changing.”
Until now, the paediatric obesity service to Tayside (POST) has concentrated on working with families whose children have been referred by school nurses and health visitors. Now it is set to go into schools to spread the healthy weight message.
NHS Tayside is planning a “school bag drop”, sending home letters with every P6-S3 pupil to help publicise the service.
POST leader, dietician Dr Laura Stewart, said, “When we go in to a school, it will be much more about promoting healthy lifestyles, promoting a healthy weight and talking to a class of children and working with them.”
She said it took four months to complete the full programme, and many children were still going through it. There had been a 20-25% drop-out rate.
Ms Robison said there would be no sanctions against health boards that failed to meet targets, but said they would get support to help them learn from some of the more successful childhood obesity programmes.
“I wouldn’t want to beat Tayside over the head with a stick, because a lot of boards are finding it challenging to meet the targets,” she said. “We recognise that it’s not easy for boards but we want them to pull out all the stops.
“We need to do this because it’s such an important issue. If we can help overweight children at a young age, it could prevent life-long problems developing.” |
