London Early Years Foundation scooped the gong for Health and Well-Being at the Nursery World Awards 2020. Michelle Samuels, LEYF apprentice manager, talks about the LEYF Early Years Chef Academy and associated qualification which clinched it the top spot
The first cohort in LEYF’s chef academy all received distinctions
The first cohort in LEYF’s chef academy all received distinctions

Many in the sector will be familiar by now with the shocking statistic that one in five children is already overweight when they start primary school, and one in three is overweight by the time they leave.

LEYF decided to do something to tackle this, launching the Early Years Chef Academy in July 2019. The Level 2 CACHE Diploma in Food Production and Cooking in Early Years, which launched at the same time, is the only specific qualification for chefs working in settings with children up to eight years of age. LEYF’s ambition for this initiative is for the chef qualification to be introduced across all UK nurseries as there is currently no guidance and training for the chefs responsible for cooking and serving nursery food.

Our first cohort consisted of six LEYF nursery chefs using our customised training kitchen at Stockwell Gardens Nursery, with the theoretical part of the training delivered at London South East Colleges (LSEC). All six received distinctions, and a second cohort of LEYF chefs are now close to completing their course. The kitchen was refurbished using part of a £130,000 donation from Guy’s and St Thomas’ Charity, which also went on training and equipment.

At the time of the launch, Jon Siddall, director of funding for the charity, said, ‘Our work suggests food provision in nursery settings has shown a high level of influence on children’s diets. The chef academy will act as a launch-pad to better understand the needs of early years providers and opportunities to make these environments healthier.’

THE CHEFS AT WORK

Our evaluation interviews found that the training had changed the chefs’ cooking practices, which had in turn impacted families’ attitudes to food at home. Chefs felt more confident to teach the staff teams about portion control, preventing previous situations where staff had allowed the children to overeat. Chefs also felt more comfortable articulating their views on healthy eating to children and their families.

An example of this was from one of our chefs who helped support the parents of a morbidly obese seven-month-old baby. The baby slept all day and never independently moved or joined in at the nursery. The newly trained chef was able to talk to the mother about her child’s eating habits – he was being given his full milk allowance alongside solid foods, and would become upset if he was not given these amounts at the nursery – and offered support and knowledge to help her understand the benefits of portion control. After just three months at nursery, this child has now lost weight and has learned to crawl.

Another example of building nutritional knowledge among parents, and offering support to the families most in need, was when one setting came up with the concept of a bag containing all the ingredients of a simple and healthy meal that parents could prepare with their child at home. Some of the parents visited food banks, but were not always sure how to create a nutritious meal from the food available. We did not want the parents to feel any embarrassment or stigma, so made this a home-learning activity. This has been repeated when required for those parents and was also adopted at other settings alongside regular recipe cards going out.

We’ve also found that children have had improved energy levels since the training. Children who attend nursery for the entire day will often have most of their meals here, whereas children in high-risk areas of deprivation may only attend part-time and their only nutritional meals will be consumed while at nursery. This means it is essential that we consider the nutritional value offered across all of our meals.

NURSERY MENUS

We had families report that their children were excited to come home and share their knowledge about healthy food and portion control. The parents have also commented on how the nursery menus have helped encourage the use of vegetables as part of their ‘at home’ meals as well as reducing their weekly food bills.

Along with all the positive feedback, parents frequently requested the written recipes from our chefs, and commented that their children really enjoy eating the nursery food.

During the pandemic, we reviewed how we could continue to support children’s nutrition at home. This led to us creating a series of recipe demonstrations for dishes such as ginger chicken noodles and spinach and butterbean macaroni on LEYF’s YouTube channel. Presented by our chef academy alumni, the videos are a good way to reach a number of parents – they can access them at their convenience, and being shown in a two- to three-minute video is beneficial to those less familiar with cooking skills.

To ensure the LEYF menus are in line with the knowledge taught as part of the qualification, we have revised our first set of four-week menus to incorporate our chefs’ new knowledge on tailoring food to different communities. For example, soups were extremely popular in one setting, but the most unpopular dish at another; most of the children who attended that nursery came from families where more of their cuisine was based on dry and finger foods. So we incorporated this insight to ensure the menus were balanced and would suit our varied communities.

Pre-pandemic, our chefs’ increased confidence meant they got involved in action outside the nursery kitchen. This included running parent cooking workshops, demonstrating how to cook simple dishes, and growing fruit and vegetables in nursery gardens (where available, chefs will get fresh herbs from their nursery gardens with the assistance of the children). At LEYF we really advocate the chefs being part of the team on the floor – not just in their kitchens.

There is also an annual ‘Masterchef Challenge’ at the organisation’s annual conference, where our chefs are given tasks such as ingredient recognition in dishes, or team cooking, as a means of promoting staff development and team-building.

DEVELOPING THE ACADEMY

Because our chefs operate across 39 nurseries, we decided there was a need for a focused support network, and have recently created the role of senior chef. These are chefs who will disseminate the knowledge gained in the chef academy to ensure all our nurseries benefit from it, until all of the chefs are able to complete the qualification and make this standard of food provision consistent across the group.

The current pandemic has delayed the completion of cohort two and unfortunately meant a smaller number of chefs continuing the course. It has also limited the number of chefs entered for the qualification. However, we can see the positive impact that the chef academy is having in our nurseries and would like to cascade this, using a more formal and rigorous framework. This would not just provide a qualification related to food production in line with early years cooking but fully incorporate every aspect of cooking in the early years – from the role of a chef in the team to the understanding of how the food directly links to child development.

To do this we will be reviewing the qualification, considering the recommendations of the academy alumni and running several cohorts with a revised specification.

The chef academy wants to be a source of advice and support for early years chefs across the UK. We are interested in setting up an ‘early years chef coalition’ to widen the conversation around early years chefs. If you are interested, get in touch by emailing L&D@leyf.org.uk.