Quality standard

Quality statement 3: Advice for parents or carers as part of the National Child Measurement Programme

Quality statement 3: Advice for parents or carers as part of the National Child Measurement Programme

Quality statement

Parents or carers of children are given advice about physical activity as part of the National Child Measurement Programme (NCMP).

Rationale

Children's participation in physical activity is important for their healthy growth and development. It is important to establish being physically active as a life‑long habit from an early age. Giving advice to parents and carers at key points during their child's development can be an effective way to 'make every contact count'. It can also lead to whole families establishing good physical activity habits.

The NCMP is delivered by all local authorities across England and involves measuring the weight and height of children aged 4 to 5 years and 10 to 11 years to assess their weight status and monitor prevalence of overweight and obesity in schools. Parents or carers receive feedback about their children's results. While it is not a mandated component of the programme, local authorities are encouraged to provide parents with their child's results. The NCMP operational guidance additionally highlights that parents generally want to receive their child's NCMP results, and that providing this information is an effective mechanism for raising awareness of the potential associated health consequences of excess weight. This therefore provides a good opportunity to give advice about physical activity, because parents are more likely to be receptive to thinking about behaviour change.

Quality measures

The following measures can be used to assess the quality of care or service provision specified in the statement. They are examples of how the statement can be measured, and can be adapted and used flexibly.

Structure

Evidence of local arrangements to ensure that parents or carers of children are given advice about physical activity as part of the NCMP.

Data source: Evidence can be collected from information recorded locally by provider organisations such as local protocols and feedback letter templates approved by a local authority that include advice on physical activity. Specimen templates are provided as part of the NCMP operational guidance.

Process

a) Proportion of children aged 4 to 5 years who are measured as part of the NCMP whose parents or carers are given advice about physical activity.

Numerator – the number in the denominator whose parents or carers are given advice about physical activity.

Denominator – the number of children aged 4 to 5 years who are measured as part of the NCMP.

Data source: Data can be collected from information recorded locally by healthcare professionals and provider organisations, for example, from patient records and the Child Health Information System. NHS England publishes data for the NCMP; this includes the total number of reception year children (aged 4 to 5) whose height and weight were measured.

b) Proportion of children aged 10 to 11 years who are measured as part of the NCMP whose parents or carers are given advice about physical activity.

Numerator – the number in the denominator whose parents or carers are given advice about physical activity.

Denominator – the number of children aged 10 to 11 years who are measured as part of the NCMP.

Data source: Data can be collected from information recorded locally by healthcare professionals and provider organisations, for example, from patient records and the Child Health Information System. NHS England publishes data for the NCMP; this includes the total number of year 6 (aged 10 to 11) children whose height and weight were measured.

Outcome

Proportion of children and young people achieving the recommendations in the UK Chief Medical Officers' physical activity guidelines.

Numerator – the number in the denominator who achieving recommendations in the UK Chief Medical Officers' physical activity guidelines

Denominator – the number of children and young people.

Data source: Sport England's Active Lives Children and Young People Survey publishes data on physical activity in children and young people. Data from this survey are also presented on the OHID physical activity tool as 'percentage of physically active children and young people' (aged 5 to 16), which is included in the Public Health Outcomes Framework (indicator C10).

What the quality statement means for different audiences

Service providers (such as school nursing services) ensure that their staff are trained to give parents or carers of children advice about physical activity and information about local opportunities to be physically active as a key component of the routine feedback that is provided to parents or carers of children who are measured as part of the NCMP.

Healthcare professionals incorporate advice about physical activity within the routine feedback they provide to parents or carers of children who are measured as part of the NCMP.

Commissioners ensure that they commission services from providers who include giving advice about physical activity as a key component of the routine feedback they provide to parents or carers of children who are measured as part of the NCMP. Commissioners may wish to monitor activity by requesting evidence of practice locally.

Parents or carers of children whose weight and height is measured at school as part of the National Child Measurement Programme are given information about the ways in which their child can benefit from being physically active. They are also given information about what they can do to be more active, as well as what is available locally. The NCMP was established in 2005 and involves measuring the weight and height of reception and year 6 children at state schools in England.

Source guidance

Definitions of terms used in this quality statement

Advice about physical activity as part of the National Child Measurement Programme

Parents and carers of children should be given written information advising them that:

  • All children should undertake a range of moderate to vigorous intensity activities for at least 60 minutes over the course of a day.

  • Children aged 5 years and over should undertake a variety of types and intensities of physical activity across the week to develop movement skills, muscular fitness, and bone strength.

  • All children should minimise the amount of time they spend being sedentary (being restrained or sitting) for extended periods (except time spent sleeping).

  • It is beneficial for them to get involved in physical activities with their children and to complete at least some local journeys (or some part of a local journey) with young children using a physically active mode of travel with the aim of establishing active travel as a life‑long habit from an early age.

Parents and carers of children should also be given written information about:

  • The benefits of physical activity and how enjoyable it is.

  • Local opportunities to be physically active.

The NCMP specimen result letters to parents can be adapted to include advice about physical activity for all children who take part in the programme. [Adapted from the UK Chief Medical Officers' physical activity guidelines, and NICE's guideline on physical activity for children and young people, recommendation 15, and expert opinion]

National Child Measurement Programme

The NCMP was established in 2005 and involves measuring the weight and height of reception and year 6 children at state‑maintained schools, including academies, in England.

The NCMP has 2 key purposes:

  • To provide robust public health surveillance data on child weight status: to understand and monitor obesity prevalence and trends at national and local levels, inform obesity planning and commissioning, and underpin the Public Health Outcomes Framework indicators on prevalence of obesity and overweight in the 4 to 5 and 10 to 11 age groups.

  • To provide parents with feedback on their child's weight status: to help them understand their child's health status, support and encourage behaviour change, and provide a mechanism for direct engagement with families.

[Adapted from NCMP operational guidance]

Equality and diversity considerations

When giving parents and carers advice on physical activity for children, healthcare professionals should take into account the age and gender of the child, as well as the ethnicity and socioeconomic status of the family in order to communicate the information in a sensitive manner. All information given about physical activity should be accessible to people with additional needs, such as physical, sensory or learning disabilities, and to people who do not speak or read English.

When sharing information about local opportunities to be active, healthcare professionals should take into account the needs of children from different socioeconomic backgrounds, and the needs of children with mental health conditions, and learning and physical disabilities.