Policy statement

The Balham Community Centre regards breakfast and tea time as an important part of the club day. Eating represents a social time for children and adults and helps children to learn about healthy eating. At breakfast and teatime, we aim to provide food, which meets the children's individual dietary needs.

Procedures

We follow these procedures to promote healthy eating in our setting.

• Before a child starts to attend the setting, we find out from parents their children's dietary needs and preferences, including any allergies.  (See the Managing Children with Allergies policy.)

• We record information about each child's dietary needs in her/his registration form and parents sign the form to signify that it is correct.

• We regularly consult with parents to ensure that our records of their children's dietary needs - including any allergies - are up-to-date.  Parents sign the up-dated record to signify that it is correct.

• We display current information about individual children's dietary needs so that all staff and volunteers are fully informed about them.

• We implement systems to ensure that children receive only food and drink that is consistent with their dietary needs and preferences as well as their parents' wishes.

• We plan menus in advance, involving children in the planning.

• We display the menus for the information of parents.

• We include foods from children's cultural backgrounds, providing children with familiar foods and introducing them to new ones.

• We take care not to provide food containing nuts or nut products and are especially vigilant where we have a child who has a known allergy to nuts.

• We provide a vegetarian alternative on days when meat or fish are offered.

• We require staff to show sensitivity in providing for children's diets and allergies.  Staff do not use a child's diet or allergy as a label for the child or make a child feel singled out because of her/his diet or allergy.

• We organise breakfast and teatime so that they are social occasions in which children and staff participate.

• We use breakfast and teatime to help children to develop independence through making choices, serving food and drink.

• We have fresh drinking water constantly available for the children.  We inform the children about how to obtain the water and that they can ask for water at any time during the day.

• In order to protect children with food allergies, we discourage children from sharing and swapping their food with one another.