Quality standard

Quality statement 4: Maintaining details of local lifestyle weight management programmes

Quality statement 4: Maintaining details of local lifestyle weight management programmes

Quality statement

Children and young people, and their parents or carers, have access to a publicly available up‑to‑date list of local lifestyle weight management programmes.

Rationale

Effective lifestyle weight management programmes for children and young people can be delivered by a range of organisations, in different locations, covering different age groups. The local authority should maintain an up‑to‑date list of local lifestyle weight management programmes and make it available to the public. Raising awareness of these locally provided programmes is important to ensure that the public, healthcare professionals and other professionals who work with children and young people are aware of the programmes that exist in their area and how to access them. Increased public awareness may lead to more self‑referrals to the programmes, either by children and young people themselves or their parents or carers. In addition, raised awareness among healthcare professionals such as GPs, school nurses, health visitors and staff involved in the National Child Measurement Programme and the Healthy Child Programme may lead to more direct referrals.

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 that an up‑to‑date list of local lifestyle weight management programmes for children and young people is made publically available by the local authority.

Data source: Local data collection.

Outcome

Number of referrals (including self‑referrals, by children and young people or their parents or carers) to lifestyle weight management programmes.

Data source: Local data collection.

What the quality statement means for different audiences

Providers of lifestyle weight management programmes ensure that they provide local authorities with up‑to‑date lists of local lifestyle weight management programmes for children and young people.

Healthcare professionals (such as GPs, dietitians, pharmacists, health visitors, school nurses and staff involved in the National Child Measurement Programme) and other professionals who work with children and young people (such as youth workers, social workers and pastoral care workers, and those who work in schools, colleges, early years organisations, children's centres and looked‑after children's teams) ensure that they are aware of the lifestyle weight management programmes for children and young people in their area and how to enrol people on them.

Local authorities ensure that they maintain a publicly available up‑to‑date list of local lifestyle weight management programmes for children and young people.

Children and young people (and their parents or carers) are aware of the lifestyle weight management programmes in their area and how they can enrol on them.

Definitions of terms used in this quality statement

Lifestyle weight management programme

Lifestyle weight management programmes focus on diet, physical activity and behaviour change to help people who are overweight or obese. They are usually based in the community and may be run by the public, private or voluntary sector. [Adapted from NICE's guideline on weight management]