year 6 were weighed and measured this week. two of the children had parents who refused to allow this. AIBU this draws morea ttention to it

[slartybartfast]

one of them is definately over weight.
i assume her mum didnt want a lecture or advice.
one looks big built, not necessarily over weight,

but only these 2 in the whole class of 30 were singled out as not being weighed.

my dd nor her friends know their weight and height, it will be sent to parents in a letter.

but why on earth wouldnt you want your child to be weighed in this case?????

I was going to refuse when we got our letter. I know full well where my ds is on the scale and I dont need any advice. Then I realised it would be hypocritical as I use the data collected in these kinds of programmes in my everyday professional life. So I agreed.

Exactly Northwest it's all about data and not the school or the government critisising anyone.

Did anyone else get greif for not having their children on the school health scheme ?

I gave consent for DD1 to get weighedin school, I thought she was underweight and wanted "confermnation" as we were told that if there was any concerns to parents would be informed. I never got informed but DD1 is underweight (been to Dr a few weeks after). I realised then that the concern sem to only be about overweight children and not actually real concern for the child at all IYSWIM. My other Dcs who are not overweight or underweight will not take part in the weighing when thir turn comes as a mqatter of principle.

worraliberty - armed with statistics how do you see the government being able to actually reduce obesity?

Armed with maths how does that equate to reducing people from becoming fat?

The real area to tackle is food processing, food advertising, food marketing. But we all now why the government wouldn't want to be tackling these types of areas.

thats annoying gorione

i spose the data goes towards providing children's diaticians etc.,

targeted interventions

and the 5 a day scheme, plus free fruit for ks 1

Ivykaty it goes a long way towards making a case for funding of programmes such as MEND. Thats how the collection of data helps.

I have no idea how they plan to reduce it other than the introduction a few years back of healthy eating for schools, various local authority fitness clubs etc..

But the fact remains that unless they know roughly how many obese children they need to deal with, they can't really tackle the problem can they?

We've just had a pilot of FSM in our area
First step to tackling a problem is understanding it

You cant randomly allocate government money (i.e our taxes) without justification through seeing the rates of childhood obesity.

sorry for typos, had just been to the park ans my fingers seem to not be defrosted yet!

and what about children with malnutrition or just plain underweight?

And then there's the future cost to the NHS due to the likely illnesses that will start to become apparent by teenage years and above.

YABVU I would not allow it as I dont agree with the big brother mentality of it all and dont want my child in these government data collection excercises. My dd is not overweight at all, tall and thin but nevertheless I just dont agree and stick by my principles.

"You cant randomly allocate government money (i.e our taxes) without justification through seeing the rates of childhood obesity."
:o
How would you prefer they allocated them? NHS money is spent according to need!
ivykaty - the NCMP is to address obesity. You might as well ask "what about all the child smokers?"

Dont you realise they actually collect all weights, not just the high ones? If there showed to be a national underweight issue, the same would apply re health promotion funding.

The statistics can be used to see the relationship between obesity and factors which are believed to increase/reduce obesity. They can be used for targetted intervension, planning and to allocate funds for tackling obesity and paying for treatment. Even on a very basic level of twice as many 11yos are obese in X region than Y region so we will allocate more money for cardiac care/ diabetes nurses in X region etc is useful.

and what about children with malnutrition or just plain underweight?

This scheme is to tackle obesity. One would hope if a child is malnourished and underweight, the parents would take them to the Dr too.

really nwn?? I thought this was a national obesity programme?

Yes that's a good point about Boroughs as well. If one Borough were to have a far higher proportion of obese children than say a neighbouring Borough, they can then look into the reason why and tackle it accordingly.

It is but they will use all the data.

The free fruit was a joke in my area , we were told that free fruit would be available so no need to bring our own in . No discussion.

What that actually meant was they could have a carrot or a brused apple. My kids liked neither and when i said that i didnt want them to receive free fruit , we would bring our own , i was told that no , that wasnt allowed , because then everyone would bring in their own fruit and they were throwing loads away every day . Strangeley they never changed suppliers or ordered differant things.

So it wasnt important that the kids ate more fruit , it was important they eat the schools fruit , they were more bothered about targets