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6.5 Food & Drink

Policy Statement

Hanney Pre-School regards snack and meal times as an important part of our day. Eating represents a social time for children and adults and helps children to learn about healthy eating. We promote healthy eating using resources and materials from the Pre-school Learning Alliance. At snack time, we encourage parents to provide nutritious 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 Sickness, Infection & Allergen Management policy.)
  • We record information about each child’s dietary needs in her/his registration record and parents sign the record 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 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.
  • Through discussion with parents and research reading by staff, we obtain information about the dietary rules of the religious groups to which children and their parents belong, and of vegetarians and vegans, and about food allergies. We take account of this information in the provision of food and drinks.
  • 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 meal and snack times so that they are social occasions in which children and staff participate.
  • We use meal and snack times to help children to develop independence through making choices, serving food and drink and feeding themselves.
  • We provide children with utensils that are appropriate for their ages and stages of development and that take account of the eating practices in their cultures.
  • 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.
  • We inform parents who provide food for their children about the storage facilities available in the setting.
  • In order to protect children with food allergies, we discourage children from sharing and swapping their food with one another.
  • For children who drink milk, we provide semi-skimmed pasteurised milk.

Packed Lunches

  • inform parents of our policy on healthy eating (See the Healthy Eating policy)
  • encourage parents to provide sandwiches with a healthy filling, fruit, and milk based deserts such as yoghurt or crème fraîche where we can only provide cold food from home. We discourage sweet drinks and can provide children with water;
  • discourage packed lunch contents that consist largely of crisps, processed foods, sweet drinks and sweet products such as cakes or biscuits. We reserve the right to return this food to the parent as a last resort;
  • provide children, bringing packed lunches, with cups and cutlery;
  • ensure staff sit with children to eat their lunch so that the mealtime is a social occasion.

Food Poisoning

  • We notify Ofsted of any food poisoning affecting two or more children looked after on the premises as soon as is reasonably practicable, but in any event within 14 days of the incident.

Legal Framework

Further Guidance

Other Useful Pre-school Learning Alliance Publications