To co-design support strategies to enable sustainable, healthy, affordable food provision, including waste mitigation practices, in Australian Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) settings.

Based upon the co-design IDEAS framework (Ideate, DEsign, Assess & Share), this co-design process involved iterative interviews and focus groups with ECEC centre staff, and workshops with Nutrition Australia. Interview and workshop themes were coded to the Theoretical Domains Framework (TDF) to develop initial prototypes for support strategies that were further developed and refined in focus groups.

ECEC with onsite food provision, in Victoria, Australia.

ECEC staff and a Victorian Government funded program delivered through Nutrition Australia that provides nutrition support to ECEC services.

ECEC staff interviews (n=17) suggested a lack of knowledge on the topic of sustainable healthy food provision and a need for resources and support for all staff and children. Workshops with Nutrition Australia built on interviews and suggested a focus on lower intensity strategies, and a suggestion to embed knowledge-related activities into the children’s curriculum. Focus groups (n=8) further informed co-design of strategies, producing a visual representation of sustainable healthy food provision with supporting tips and a whole-of-centre approach that includes children through a classroom activity.

The co-designed resources could provide feasible strategies for the adoption of sustainable, healthy and affordable provision practices in the ECEC setting. Involvement of a local government-funded health promotion service provides valuable research-to-practice contribution as well opportunity for scalable dissemination of resources through existing infrastructure.

To assess the comprehensiveness (scope of nutrition guidance) and strength (clarity of written language) of centre-based nutrition policies (CBNP) within early childhood education (ECE) centres. To also consider the applicability of an existing CBNP assessment tool and policy alignment with best practice food provision and feeding practices.

Cross-sectional online study to assess written ECE CBNP using the Wellness Child Care Assessment Tool.

Licenced ECE centres in the state of Victoria, Australia.

ECE centres (operating at least 8 h per d, 48 weeks per annum), stratified by location (rural and metropolitan), centre management type (profit and not-for-profit) and socio-economic area (low, middle, high).

Included individual CBNP (n 118), predominantly from metropolitan centres (56 %) and low-medium socio-economic areas (78 %). Policies had low overall Wellness Child Care Assessment Tool scores, particularly strength scores which were low across all four domains (i.e. nutrition education, nutrition standards, health promotion and communication/evaluation). The nutrition standards domain had the lowest strength score. The communication/evaluation domain had the lowest comprehensiveness score. Content analysis indicated low scores may relate to the Wellness Child Care Assessment Tool applicability for the Australian context due to differences in best practice guidance.

Despite the presence of written nutrition policies in ECE centres, many showed weak language and lacked comprehensiveness and strength. This may relate to poor implementation of best practice food provision or feeding practices. Low scores, however, may partly stem from using an assessment tool that is not country-specific. The redevelopment of country-specific tools to assess ECE CBNP may be warranted.