Explore our range of “Why weight to talk?” training programmes for the VCFSE sector alongside a range of local and national training opportunities to enhance your organisation’s knowledge of the causes of overweight and obesity and your confidence to support the communities you serve.
Many people believe that if we exercise a little more and eat a little less, then we can easily maintain a healthier weight. So why do we now find ourselves in a situation where 2 in 3 adults and 2 in 5 children at Year 6 are living with overweight and obesity?
Where we live, what we do for work, our education, and the relationships we have are increasingly recognised as important factors in our overall health and wellbeing. And when it comes to weight, the takeaways on our high streets, junk food marketing, the price of fruit and vegetables and the cost of cooking from scratch all shape our choices and decisions when it comes to food and nutrition. All these things make it harder for many parents and caregivers to provide for their children and where they can’t provide a healthier diet, they risk being judged.
“Why weight to talk?” is designed to help practitioners consider the broad range of factors – often outside of the control of an individual – that contribute to our health and wellbeing. The training also explores how weight stigma, both intentional and unintentional, can make it harder to maintain healthier behaviours and how as practitioners we can play a role in supporting children and families.
Register for our online and in person training to learn more about the complexities associated with weight and health and how to best engage children, families, and adults in conversations about their health and their weight.
The Healthy Weight in Early Years (HealthyWEY) e-learning toolkit provides a universal and collaborative approach to promote a healthy weight in the early years.
It aims to do this through:
The toolkit is designed for frontline practitioners working in antenatal and postnatal care, health services, and early years settings. HealthyWEY will complement practitioner knowledge and skills gained through “Why weight to talk?” by exploring behaviour change techniques, assessment of weight in children and nutrition, physical activity and weight during pregnancy amongst a number of other topics in greater depth.
e-Learning for Healthcare (e-LfH) has been developed by Health Education England (HEE). e-LfH delivers over 150 e-learning programmes in partnership with the professional bodies such as Royal Colleges and associations, Department of Health policy teams and other arm’s length programmes/bodies e.g. NHS England and the Office for Health Improvement and Disparities.
There are a number of free to access training courses you can access through e-LfH addressing healthier weight and obesity, and we have provided details of two of these in the sections below (Obesity Training; Healthy Weight Coach).
Click here to register for a free e-LfH account
The e-LfH Obesity Training is an engaging e-learning programme for practitioners in the NHS, local authorities, and the VCFSE sector.
The programme introduces obesity and its implications for health, provides a knowledge base on identification of unhealthy weight and risk factors for weight gain, managing obesity, and learning on guiding and enabling behaviour change.
In July 2020, the government announced an ambitious strategy to tackle obesity. The strategy also included a commitment to offer all primary care networks the opportunity for staff to support people to achieve a healthier weight by training to become a healthy weight coach.
A healthy weight coach will engage and support people living with overweight or obesity to help them make positive changes to their health and health behaviours to promote a healthier weight. They will be well-placed to signpost or, where appropriate, refer people to weight management services.
On completion of the e-learning programme, you will have the skills and confidence to have meaningful conversations to support people to move towards a healthier weight.
There are a range of training opportunities via Future Learn that cover healthy eating, nutrition, obesity, diabetes, and weight management. Some of these are open access, others require a subscription to Future Learn.
With a network of 500+ Training Centres across the UK, RSPH offers a wide range of vocational qualifications designed to support practitioners. They also offer a growing number of skills-oriented eLearning Courses.
We have developed a ‘one-stop shop’ for third sector organisations in Cheshire and Merseyside to help signpost residents to local support on nutrition, food insecurity and physical activity. We have also collated information on local authority weight management support services across Cheshire and Merseyside.
If you have any questions about the “Why weight?” hub or would like to submit information on a local support service in Cheshire and Merseyside, please get in touch using the form below:
We will endeavour to respond to all enquiries within five working days.
If you enquire about the potential to host your service on the “Why weight?” Hub, we may contact you for further information to assess suitability.
