Romp and chomp program

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Sign In. Advanced Search. Search Menu. Article Navigation. Close mobile search navigation Article Navigation. Volume E-mail: andrea. Oxford Academic. A Colin Bell. Peter Kremer. Melanie Nichols. Maree Crellin. Michael Smith. Sharon Sharp. Florentine de Groot. Lauren Carpenter. Rachel Boak. Narelle Robertson , Narelle Robertson. Boyd A Swinburn.

Select Format Select format. Permissions Icon Permissions. Professional development for early-childhood workers and service staff. Development and enhancement of partnership, strategic alliances, and community organizational networks. Establishment of project management, coordination, budgetary, and governance structures. Identification of funding and resources to support program implementation.

Key messages: daily active play; less screen time; more fruit and vegetables; and more water. Communication plan and social marketing plan. Nutrition and physical activity resources for parents and early-childhood service staff from reputable and compatible sources. Series of posters, postcards, and brochures promoting overarching campaign and key messages see above.

Resource folders to a total of 46 kindergartens in total by April Community health professionals distribute folders to kindergartens with suggestions on possible applications.

All resource materials made available online for any early-childhood worker to access. Water bottles to 31 kindergartens in late for Water bottles to 43 kindergartens in late for Lunch bags to 38 kindergartens in and lunch bags to 47 kindergartens in Sweet-drink demonstration resource to 76 kindergartens during — Energy-dense foods display disseminated to all kindergartens and Long Day Care centers for display. Objective 5: To significantly decrease energy-dense snacks and increase consumption of fruit and vegetables.

Food safety regulations identified and supported. Production of 3 separate optional policies for kindergartens: 1 fruit and vegetable snack only; 2 fruit, vegetable, and healthy sandwich; and 3 fruit, vegetable, sandwich, and healthy alternative. All were pilot-tested and finalized. Collaboration with Dental Health Services Victoria, which provided resources lunch boxes, drink bottles, and social marketing material for kindergarten children.

Collaboration with Kids—Go For Your Life program from for healthy eating and drink choices resources. Community health workers and allied and dental health professionals trained to support kindergartens to undertake the intervention activities. Quarterly inserts into early-childhood newsletters. E-mail, phone, or site visit access to dietitian and other allied health professionals for early-childhood workers as required.

Nutrition and drinks media release. Promotional materials eg, balloons, stickers, posters, postcards produced and distributed. Development, pilot testing, and implementation of a physical activity policy for early-childhood care and educational settings.

Inclusion of policies into parent booklets. Structured Active Play Program developed with input from early-childhood workers. Pilot-tested, produced, and disseminated to all early-childhood settings. Settings staff trained in fundamental movement skills and ways to provide active play opportunities for young children.

Professional development for early-childhood staff active play workshops. Training included how to use the Structured Active Play Program and how to adapt it for each setting. Active play demonstrations at kindergartens in City of Greater Geelong provided by allied health and dental professionals. Active Play newsletter with information for parents and games for children produced and distributed.

Quarterly inserts placed into early-childhood newsletters. Presence at school and community festivals, where active-play games were demonstrated and children and parents encouraged to participate.

E-mail, phone, or site visit access to occupational therapists for early-childhood workers as required around implementing active-play program. Active-play media release. Promotional materials eg, balloons, stickers, posters, postcards, etc. Overall needs-assessment evaluation identifying factors found to influence quality and quantity of screen-time viewing. Literature review, mind-mapping exercise, and focus groups with parents.

Development and distribution of posters and postcards. Ongoing media coverage print and radio. Awareness-raising activities with parents, health professionals, and early-childhood workers. Community consultation. Development and pilot testing of intervention strategies with early-childhood workers.

Development of professional training packages for early-childhood staff and dental and allied health professionals to implement the integrated health promotion package. Presence at community festivals in the intervention region. Presentations at community forums and early-childhood and health conferences.

Integration of policies and early-childhood nutrition and active play into local government and health-service strategic and public health plans. Open in new tab. Open in new tab Download slide. TABLE 3 Regression coefficients from analysis of the differences in anthropometric indexes between the intervention group and the comparison group 1.

Each theme is discussed below. Relationships - The interviewees described the major positive outcomes from the project as the great achievement of bringing together the big 'players' from across the Geelong community to work together, the establishment of partnerships with other similar projects, and the sustainable relationships that arose:. There were also a number of negative reactions that may reflect the lack of processes and protocols that could have facilitated better partnerships and overcome philosophical differences between partners about the project:.

There were also negative feelings about the perception that some partner organisations tried to hold onto the ownership and branding of their own projects. A frequently mentioned problem during the interviews was a lack of project leadership which may be a consequence of high staff turnover as throughout the intervention period a total of five project coordinators were employed.

Resources - There was a strong feeling of frustration related to the lack of resources and funding available for project implementation, although several key formants identified this as an advantage and closer to the real world situation:.

A number of strategies were utilised to increase capacity and sustainability throughout the project. The incorporation of Active Play in the TAFE Technical and Further Education curriculum was, viewed as one of the positive and sustainable outcomes from the project, as were the development and adoption of healthy eating and physical activity policies in early childhood settings. The intervention strategy of training allied health professionals dieticians, physiotherapists, dental staff, occupational therapists etc to support the health promotion activities in the kindergartens was also viewed positively, although the sustainability of this part of the intervention was questioned.

The lack of skills and knowledge of some of the committee members related to capacity building and health promotion was also mentioned during the interviews, but the involvement of experts was rated positively.

Structures - Key informants made a number of comments regarding the lack of organisational structures and management support throughout the life of the project. There was seen to be ambiguity about the roles and responsibilities of individuals, organisations and the various committees.

Comments were also made about the lack of meetings of the higher level reference group and the fact that the project managers and steering committee felt kept on a tight rein and unable to make independent decisions, which was seen to have slowed down processes:. In the CCI there are three levels of capacity for each domain, with the levels related to increasing sustainability of the specific domain activities.

A score of 3 represents substantial capacity and a score of 4 represents capacity entirely reached [ 18 ]. Figure 1 shows that in the Network Partnerships domain, there is a higher mean score in the first level related to identification of members of the network , a lower score and therefore less capacity to deliver the project level 2 and even less to maintain and resource the project level 3.

The scores across the levels are more even within the Knowledge Transfer domain, which also has the highest scores compared to the other domains; indicating the network had substantial capacity to develop and implement the project level 1 and 2 but a lower capacity to integrate the project into mainstream practices. The outcomes for the Problem Solving domain show a similar pattern; with a score close to 'substantial' capacity for the network to work together to solve problems and to identify and overcome problems level 1 and 2 , and a lower capacity to sustain flexible problem solving level 3.

Overall, the scores were below three, which suggests that the achieved capacity has not reached the 'substantial' level. In figure 2 we see the rating of the Infrastructure Investments domain. The financial investments element scored very low indicating that there was only limited capacity to develop financial capital.

Network Partnership; level 1: identify partners, level 2: deliver program, level 3: maintain network. Knowledge Transfer; level 1: develop program, level 2: transfer, level 3: integrate in mainstream practice. Problem Solving; level 1: working together, level 2: identify and overcome problems, level 3: sustain.

The results from this mixed methods study demonstrate that this was achieved in only some of the domains of capacity building, specifically those related to partnerships, organisational development and resource allocation. However significant areas of capacity building were not addressed during the project implementation, particularly related to high-level and ongoing leadership.

There were a number of positive outcomes identified in this study related to capacity building, including the establishment of sustainable partnerships, use of specialist advice, and integration of activities into ongoing formal training for early childhood workers. A number of challenges were also identified which related predominately to budgetary constraints, staff turnover, unclear governance structures, lack of ongoing high level leadership and inadequate communication between the partnering organisations.

Despite these challenges however, the capacity of the Geelong community to promote healthy eating and physical activity was increased after the Romp and Chomp intervention and although only a moderate level of capacity could be demonstrated by the end of the intervention phase, this was still regarded as substantial progress by those involved. An essential aspect of capacity building is leadership [ 19 , 20 ], and although a clear project aim and specific objectives were agreed and articulated, we have found a strong perception of lack of leadership in the project on several levels.

Leadership was consistently identified as an area of capacity building that was not addressed during the project and this finding leads us to recommend an investment in leadership training and strategies to increase group cohesion, team building, succession planning, collaboration and project management across the organisations involved.

The implementation team appeared to have overcome the limited finances partly with resource reallocation and an increased degree of in-kind support and personal input and commitment. Previous research identifies these as important aspects of capacity building [ 2 ]. More transparent resource allocation and documented in-kind contributions may have reduced dissatisfaction and further enhanced collaboration between organisations.

This was viewed as a sustainable and potentially cost-effective method of capacity building. The training of allied health professionals to support child care workers and early childhood settings staff to implement health promotion programs was also identified as a good outcome from the project.

Although not captured in this evaluation, this aspect of the project has now become integrated into the larger, state-wide health promotion project Kids-'Go for your life' , increasing its reach and sustainability. During the development of future health promotion projects the sustainability of the various capacity building activities should be planned to ensure ongoing benefits to the community after the specific health promotion project is completed.

There were distinct strategies in the project action plan to enhance organisational development; however, the findings from this study demonstrate that a number of important issues related to communication, roles and responsibilities, leadership and resources were not addressed.

These issues were felt to have slowed down project implementation and strained relationships. This highlights the need to establish agreed structures and protocols early on in a complex project such as this, to ensure effective communication and clear roles and responsibilities across and within partner organisations.

These structures and protocols should be reviewed periodically to ensure they are still appropriate for the stage of the project, given the often long term nature of these large scale projects. It is also important to assess the performance of the partnerships throughout the life of the project through a formal process and to address issues as they arise. Inter-organisational collaboration and partnerships are often complicated and can be difficult to manage and in addition to our experience here, previous research also suggests that strategies to foster strong collaborations and addressing the ongoing needs of partnerships should be a priority in these types of health promotion projects [ 5 , 22 ].

But despite the large number of barriers and challenges that were reported through this evaluation, our analysis of the qualitative data identified a genuine sense that a number of positive outcomes were achieved and that lasting attitudinal and policy changes have resulted across the Geelong community.

The use of a capacity-building framework to determine the specific intervention strategies required may have avoided a number of the issues identified and highlighted the areas where there was little activity, providing an opportunity to address the gaps in the program.

There are a number of strengths and limitations of this evaluation study. One limitation was a lack of documentation for some aspects of the project implementation which means that we may have under-represented the activities in certain areas of the project.

To overcome this problem however we used data triangulation rather than relying on only one method which is a considerable strength of this study. Secondly there was no comparison group which could make it more difficult to determine if increased capacity was initiated by the project.

However, this was overcome by the use of both qualitative and quantitative evaluation methods and in the interviews key informants were asked to reflect on changes over time that resulted from the intervention project specifically. Again this would result in an under-representation of the impacts of the intervention. Reassessment of community capacity in a few years will provide additional useful evidence of the sustainability of the increased community capacity in the Geelong community.

Despite this success there are important learnings related to project management, leadership, governance, communication, documentation, capacity, resources, collaboration and fostering strong partnerships that should be addressed in future long-term, community-based health promotion projects of this kind.

Adopting these recommendations should strengthen the capacity of stakeholder organisations to implement efforts to improve children's health and support families in their endeavours also.

As one of the interviewees stated:. Article Google Scholar. Health Policy. Google Scholar. Public Health Nutr. Article PubMed Google Scholar. Int J Obes Lond. Nutr J. Int J Pediatr Obes. Health Promot Int. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

Health Serv Res. Edited by: Sudbury MA. Liamputtong P: Qualitative research methods. Health Educ Behav. Hughes R: A conceptual framework for intelligence-based public health nutrition workforce development.

Can J Public Health. PubMed Google Scholar. Download references. We wish to thank Anne Simmons who provided expert knowledge on capacity building and developed the methodology of the action plan assessment, and the key informants, who shared their experiences. We acknowledge the support of all project coordinators, staff and partner organisations. You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar. Correspondence to Andrea M de Silva-Sanigorski.

FPG participated in the data collection and carried out the statistical analyses and interpretation, and drafted the manuscript. NMR participated in the data collection and revised the manuscript. BS was involved in designing the study and revising the manuscript.