By Casey Neill
Dandenong Community Family Day Care and Dandenong Day Nursery are celebrating recognition as a healthy early childhood service.
Cancer Council of Victoria applauded the service, which cares for more than 420 children, on Wednesday 5 April.
The centre is part of the Healthy Together Achievement Program, which supports the development of healthy early childhood services, schools and workplaces across the state.
It is focused on promoting healthy lifestyles and improving the environments where people live, learn and work.
Dandenong Community Family Day Care and Dandenong Day Nursery service director Deborah Noble said the real reward was giving children a healthy start to their development and education.
“The achievement program recognises that healthy children learn better, and for us we want children in our care to be developing healthy lifelong habits so they can have the best outcomes,” she said.
“Since being in the program, we have worked hard on updating our smoke-free signage and refreshing our sun protection protocols – all steps towards a healthier service.”
The service has developed policies and started partnerships with other community health services.
It’s introduced a focus on health in its service newsletters, and is making a healthy lifestyle part of its curriculum.
“Our Family Day Care children bring their own food, so we are promoting what a healthy lunch box would contain through our parent newsletters as well as through our playgroup, which we run from the co-ordination unit each week,” Ms Noble said.
“In our child care service, we are having our menu assessed by the healthy eating advisory service, and we are in the process of organising with Monash Health for dental checks for both services.
Next, Dandenong Community Family Day Care and Dandenong Day Nursery will focus on healthy eating, oral health, physical activity and active play.
“Physical activity and active play are something that we promote through our educational programs, and later this month we have engaged an active play in-service for our child care service and our family day care playgroup,” Ms Noble said.
