Burnley buffalos
Food Champion application: Improving community diet and nutrition
You may not know it, but Burnley is full of buffalos, all bounding, leaping and running around - but I’m not talking about the four-legged kind! Our buffalos are young people, all bursting with energy and eager to learn something new.
The Buffalo project - Burnley Food and Fitness Aimed at Lowering Obesity - is an obesity prevention project delivered in partnership between Burnley Borough Council and NHS East Lancashire with external funding through lottery monies: Target Wellbeing.
The project predominantly works with Year 5 pupils over an academic year (curriculum and after school) and also provides sessions for every other class (activity and cookery) in the school, in addition to offering a full parental programme. The parental programme runs along side the children's project. Content is similar to that of the children's programme tackling poor diet through increased nutritional knowledge and cookery skills and sedentary lifestyles through organised walks, dance and relaxation.
Aims and Objectives
It is a primary school based health and fitness project incorporating healthy eating and cookery, physical activity and sport, and gardening. It aims to give children and their parent's simple and effective practical advice on how to eat healthily and become more active.
Partners
The Buffalo project is a partnership between Burnley Council, East Lancashire NHS Primary Care Trust and Target Wellbeing.
Methodology
The Buffalo Project set itself the target of 30 curriculum and after school sessions with 120 year five children in four schools. This year, we trounced those targets, working intensively with 210 children in 7 schools. We also set targets of delivering 48 additional regular cookery and activity sessions in 4 schools with 720 children - we are on target to deliver 84 regular sessions in 7 schools with 1260 children.
The parental program (which recently received national recognition for a health award) is on target to meet objectives of delivering cookery, physical activity and accredited adult learning courses with 60 parents in 4 schools. To date, 10 parents have subsequently enrolled onto higher education courses.
This year we have delivered 5 'celebration' events:
A whole school 'Fruity Friday' event (healthy eating events);
Fruity Friday is an annual awareness and fundraising campaign, held by World Cancer Research Fund (WCRF UK) to increase public awareness of the links between diet, nutrition, physical activity and cancer prevention, and to raise valuable funds for cancer research and education programmes. The theme of the campaign was ‘Go Bananas for Fruity Friday!’
On the day we encouraged all key stage 2 children to wear something yellow, e.g. a yellow T- shirt, hair ribbons/bobbles/wig, socks, belt, skirt, jewellery etc. In return we asked that children contribute 50p to the fund on the day.
The money raised was then sent off to the WCRF. Children were also asked to design a ‘healthy smoothie’ using the ‘RAINBOW RULE’, which involved eating a mix of different coloured fruits and vegetables each day. Children made healthy smoothies throughout the day and took part in fun ‘fruity Friday’ related activity games!
Buffalo 'Junior Masterchef' competition;
Buffalo junior masterchef visited Stoneyholme Primary School to seek out up and coming young chefs. Finalists had to design a healthy lunchbox and take part in a lively cook off in front of a large school audience, including a panel of hungry judges. All the finalists worked their socks off and produced some very tasty meals. The cooking was at a very high standard, so much so that we could have found ourselves the next Jamie Oliver!
This is a competition that we hope to repeat as it is a great way to get across the ideas behind healthy eating. “The competition was successful at increasing interest, awareness and participation in healthy cooking. The ‘buzz’ created by the competition was fantastic.”
Family Buffalo Mini Olympics;
This years Buffalo Mini Olympics were held at Barden Primary School. Teams comprised of a mixture of Barden and St Johns (Burnley) Primary school children. This was a fantastic opportunity for children from different schools and backgrounds to work and achieve together. Effort and determination were in abundance with every team pushing to win a medal!
Family strictly 'Come Dancing' event
St John’s RC was the location of the Buffalo dance celebration. Parents learnt some fun salsa moves while the children learn street dance. Both parents and adults danced together before showing off their routines.
A Christmas buffet & games afternoon
The children of Springfield Primary School prepared an exciting and tasty feast for the Christmas Celebration. Everyone worked hard to create healthy and festive food for a buffet that they shared with their parents. This was a great opportunity for the children to show off their new cooking skills to their parents and to celebrate the festive season together.
All the schools were recruited based on deprivation indices; free school meal eligibility and child measuring programme data (percentage of children overweigh/obese). The enthusiasm and willingness of the teaching staff to become involved in the project and prioritise sessions for children & parents also influences recruitment in the first instance.
All children’s lesson plans are linked to national curriculum subjects such as science and PE to enable teaching staff to link sessions to themes of work which are routinely covered. We deliver 30 children’s sessions over the academic year.
Term 1 consists of a full curriculum afternoon each week of food topics and physical activity. Food topics include Energy balance, junk food, food labels, food miles, lunch boxes, stir fry and pizza with activity sessions including fitness circuits, orienteering, taekwondo and salsa.
In terms 2 & 3, sessions move to after school clubs with practical cookery sessions to include spicy shepherds pie, and pasta bake, activity sessions to include basketball & hockey and gardening sessions to bring both topics together.
The Buffalo Project recognises that parents have a massive part to play in helping children achieve all aspects of a healthy lifestyle. The parental project is therefore crucial in supporting parents to support their own children to bring about positive changes in behaviour and lifestyle.
Weekly parental sessions are held at school with gentle exercise, dance & relaxation classes and cookery classes being provided. They are a fantastic way of meeting other parents and gaining tips and ideas that can be applied to the whole family. Sessions are of a similar content to that of the children, covering similar recipes and health topics, but with a greater emphasis on messages that are pertinent to achieving family lifestyle change.
Market partnership
The Buffalo project also works in partnership with local businesses in order to bring local food produce to primary schools across the town. Burnley market has come on board and now support the project in buying its produce to include fruit, vegetables, meat & dairy produce from the market.
Before the partnership a large percentage of food for cookery clubs was bought from local supermarkets, and whilst we still need to buy some food there, this situation wasn’t ideal and goes against the ethos of the project - which includes teaching children and parents of the benefits of buying healthy, locally grown produce and supporting local businesses in Burnley.
Promotion
The Buffalo Project has achieved local and regional media support, attracting much interest from the Burnley Express and the Lancashire Telegraph, as well as our local radio station 2BR, particularly when we announced our ground-breaking community partnership between primary schools and local traders. We’ve achieved national recognition, featuring on the Sustainable Development Commission Healthy Futures website as an example of progress in practice, and we have been asked to present at several national conferences.
The project has hosted a number of high profile visits, including Hazel Blears (then minister for public health), and Sue Mulvaney, director of children’s services for Lancashire County Council. Recently, we entered the national Community Partnership Awards 2010, giving a presentation in front of a panel. From the six finalists in the healthy communities category, we came joint second and the project was highly commended.
Resources
We use:
- Locally-sourced food for the cookery sessions;
- Cooking equipment and Buffalo recipe books;
- Physical activity equipment and coaching/staffing costs;
Evaluation
As mentioned, The Buffalo Project set itself the target of 30 curriculum and after school sessions with 120 year five children in four schools. This year, we trounced those targets, working intensively with 210 children in 7 schools.
We also set targets of delivering 48 additional regular cookery and activity sessions in 4 schools with 720 children - we are on target to deliver 84 regular sessions in 7 schools with 1260 children.
The parental program (which recently received national recognition for a health award) is on target to meet objectives of delivering cookery, physical activity and accredited adult learning courses with 60 parents in 4 schools. To date, 10 parents have subsequently enrolled onto higher education courses. In addition to term time activities the project also delivers Buffalo holiday camps during every half term for inactive/overweight children.
This year we are on target to meet our objectives of approximately 150 regular attendees at the various clubs. This year we have delivered 5 'celebration' events to include:
- A whole school 'Fruity Friday' event (healthy eating events)
- Buffalo 'Junior Masterchef' competition
- Family Buffalo Mini Olympics
- Family strictly 'Come Dancing' event
- Christmas buffet & games afternoon Sessions are well attended by parents, grandparents, children and school teaching staff.
The parental side of the project is evaluated through the National lottery (the public health observatory), preliminary results show improved mood, confidence & self esteem, increased physical activity levels and dietary changes in addition to weight loss.
Lessons Learned
We realised quite early on that the children we were working with were not always fully in control of food bought/eaten, how leisure time was being spent etc. We therefore decided to introduce the parental project in an attempt to bring about family lifestyle changes. The parental sessions are therefore a recent development to the Buffalo project.
Whilst we are seeing improved levels of participation and behaviour changes, enlisting them onto the programme has been somewhat difficult. We are working in some of the most deprived areas of the borough with entrenched social issues and significant barriers to change. By working with and listening to parents needs we are able to tailor programmes to their specific requirements.
Teacher involvement was also sporadic in the early stages of the project and relied upon the personal interest of the individual teacher and their workload. To overcome this, we have worked hard to try and involve teaching staff more directly in the development and delivery of the lesson plans. We consulted with them in linking plans to National curriculum subjects such as Science, PE & PSHE to ensure content was relevant and delivered in a way that was practical within a school environment and allowed maximum follow up.
Future Developments
Future plans include a ‘mini Buffalo’ for children aged 4-6yrs.
Intergeneration project – bringing children and parents/grandparents together to enjoy traditional physical activities, sharing cooking skills & recipes & gardening ideas.
School exchanges – bringing together children/parents from different schools & communities to enjoy healthy life style activities.
Expanding project to other areas on East Lancashire
Contact Details
Contact Name: Laura Leverentz
Job Title: Healthy Lifestyles Coordinator
Phone: 01282 664463
Email: lleverentz@burnley.gov.uk
Organisation: Burnley Council
Address: Parker Lane BURNLEY Lancashire BB11 2DT
This case study was added on 21/04/10