Story House strengthens children's health and wellbeing

When Story House Early Learning Dandenong North wanted to build on its commitment to children's health and wellbeing, Healthy Places Healthy Futures provided a practical framework, resources and support to guide next steps. Caring for around 70 children and their families, the service used Healthy Places and support from Monash Health to further embed health and wellbeing across its service.

The building blocks for continuous improvement

Director Shweta Rajan says Healthy Places helped the service take a structured approach.

"The first five years of life are so important to support children's health and wellbeing," says Shweta.

"Healthy Places gives us a framework to review what we're doing, identify opportunities for improvement and access resources that support our educators, children and families.

"Healthy Places highlights the great work we're already doing and helps us strengthen further," she says.

Turning ideas into action

Healthy Places helps services focus on the health and wellbeing priorities that matter most to their children and families. For Story House, this included strengthening food, nutrition and oral health, as well as physical activity and movement.

Through the initiative, Story House partnered with health promotion practitioner Catherine Delaney from Monash Health. One example of Catherine’s support was reviewing Story House’s menu through a Healthy Places assessment process.

"The menu assessment helped us better understand children's nutritional needs and identify ways to strengthen our menu," says Shweta.

"As a result, we included more vegetables, greens and fruit and gained a better understanding of the types and amounts of foods that support children's growth and development."

This collaboration also created moments to share information with families.

"Families have benefited from learning more about children's nutritional needs and the foods that support their health and wellbeing," she says.

Story House has also used Healthy Places to strengthen its focus on oral health and is also currently working towards recognition for the physical activity and movement priority.

A key feature of Healthy Places is the support available from local health promotion organisations.

Support may include one-on-one guidance, professional development opportunities, resources and assistance to work towards Healthy Places recognition.

"There is a lot of information available about health and wellbeing. Healthy Places brings that information together into a framework that services can use to take a whole-service approach," says Catherine.

"Recognition celebrates the work services are doing and makes their commitment to health and wellbeing visible to families and the wider community," she says.

Alignment to the National Quality Framework

The Healthy Places Framework is also aligned to ACEQA's National Quality Framework.

“Healthy Places’ alignment to the National Quality Framework allows us to embed health, wellbeing and sustainability into our everyday practice, strengthen our continuous improvement processes and connect our work with the National Quality Standards.

“This is important because it ensures that promoting children’s health and wellbeing is not an additional program but an integral part of our curriculum,” says Shweta.

Healthy Places in practice

Healthy Places strengthens health and wellbeing across services.

"Healthy Places has helped us strengthen our practices, access valuable resources and connect with expert health promotion guidance from Monash Health. Healthy Places is a practical way to support the health and wellbeing of children and families while recognising the work services are already doing,” says Shweta.

"We've learned so much through Healthy Places and would definitely recommend it to other services," she says.

Healthy Places Healthy Futures is supported by the Victorian Government and Cancer Council Victoria.