Ensuring integrity in the Kids—“Go for your life” early childhood award program

Abstract

Background: Kids—“Go for your life” aims to reduce the risk of child overweight and obesity by promoting and supporting active play and healthy eating in early childhood services (ECS) through an award program. To be awarded, an ECS is provided with ongoing support to progressively meet 9 award criteria. On self-determined achievement of the award criteria, an ECS can apply to become a Kids—“Go for your life” award service.A potential issue associated with self-determined achievement of each criterion is the possibility of differing standards and quality of work, potentially impacting on the integrity of the award program. This study aimed to identify whether there was consistency in quality of work across Kids—“Go for your life” award services and whether they were reaching expected award standards.Methods: 15 randomly selected ECS awarded through Kids—“Go for your life” were involved in the study. Through site visits, qualitative methods were employed, including observation of meal times, outdoor environments and active play experiences; and interviews with key staff about strategies used to meet the criteria. These methods ascertained program awareness, whole-of-service involvement in the award program criteria, standards and quality of workaround each criterion and recognised innovative activities that ECS were undertaking which could serve as good practise examples.Results: The findings highlighted that services were reaching and maintaining the standard and quality of the award criteria and the program. However, it was identified beyond the award program children's levels of active play and the services’ approach to the range of active play opportunities varied. In particular, variation occurred in the quality of outdoor play environments, the availability of outdoor play equipment, opportunities for challenging children, risk taking and innovation in experiences and programming.Conclusions: There was consistency in the quality of work across Kids—“Go for your life” award criteria and, services were meeting recommended award standards. However, more work needs to be done to support outdoor active play environments to ensure they are interactive, challenging and flexible. Further work around developing the capacity of services to address active play is required so that challenging outdoor active play becomes a greater priority. Background: Kids—“Go for your life” aims to reduce the risk of child overweight and obesity by promoting and supporting active play and healthy eating in early childhood services (ECS) through an award program. To be awarded, an ECS is provided with ongoing support to progressively meet 9 award criteria. On self-determined achievement of the award criteria, an ECS can apply to become a Kids—“Go for your life” award service. A potential issue associated with self-determined achievement of each criterion is the possibility of differing standards and quality of work, potentially impacting on the integrity of the award program. This study aimed to identify whether there was consistency in quality of work across Kids—“Go for your life” award services and whether they were reaching expected award standards. Methods: 15 randomly selected ECS awarded through Kids—“Go for your life” were involved in the study. Through site visits, qualitative methods were employed, including observation of meal times, outdoor environments and active play experiences; and interviews with key staff about strategies used to meet the criteria. These methods ascertained program awareness, whole-of-service involvement in the award program criteria, standards and quality of workaround each criterion and recognised innovative activities that ECS were undertaking which could serve as good practise examples. Results: The findings highlighted that services were reaching and maintaining the standard and quality of the award criteria and the program. However, it was identified beyond the award program children's levels of active play and the services’ approach to the range of active play opportunities varied. In particular, variation occurred in the quality of outdoor play environments, the availability of outdoor play equipment, opportunities for challenging children, risk taking and innovation in experiences and programming. Conclusions: There was consistency in the quality of work across Kids—“Go for your life” award criteria and, services were meeting recommended award standards. However, more work needs to be done to support outdoor active play environments to ensure they are interactive, challenging and flexible. Further work around developing the capacity of services to address active play is required so that challenging outdoor active play becomes a greater priority.