Childhood obesity: “One of our biggest challenges is trying to engage parents to recognize where there is an issue."

Childhood obesity: Parents need to ‘step up to the mark’

Schools take on too much of the burden of tackling childhood obesity, a county councillor claims.
Cllr Clair Bell believes parents should be “stepping up to the mark” rather than relying on the state to reduce the weight of their children.
Around one in eight children were overweight when they started school in Kent last year.


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“It isn’t the responsibility of the state to bring up people’s children when they are small.
“We can give them as much help and support as possible but we must not focus on teachers and schools all the time when they have enough to be doing anyway.”
Public health consultant Samantha Bennett said the council is looking into one-on-one consultations with parents when children begin to eat solid food.
However, she added it is often challenging to get parents involved and admit their child has a problem.
She said: “We struggle to get hold of parents and when we do speak to them, the actual uptake of the interventions that we offer are very low.
“One of our biggest challenges is trying to engage parents to recognise where there is an issue.
“Largely the feedback when school nurses make those conversations, is they don’t think there’s a problem.
“They don’t recognise there is an issue with their child or it’s something they need to deal with at this time.
“If you’ve got obese parents, they are much less likely to recognise an issue with their own child as being obese.”