March - start well online

Childhood is a crucial time that lays the foundation of physical, mental and emotional health and wellbeing.

The impacts of childhood experiences are broad and life-long. Positive experiences have been shown to lead to better performance at school, followed by better employment and higher income in adulthood. Positive experiences also result in better physical and mental health, not only living longer, but also living healthier for longer.

Breastfeeding has many benefits over bottle-feeding, both for you and your baby.

Breastfeeding gives your baby essential nutrients in the right quantities. This helps your child to stay a healthy weight and improves their oral health. Breastmilk also contains important antibodies that boost your baby’s immune system.

Having skin-to-skin contact during breastfeeding is a great way to feel close to your baby and helps to strengthen your bond. This benefits your child’s mental and emotional development, and makes them more likely to have better future relationships and well-being.

Breastfeeding has health benefits for mothers too. It reduces your risk of having breast and ovarian cancer, diabetes and high blood pressure in the future.

It can take time to get the hang of breastfeeding. All mothers and babies are different, and you and your baby will work out your own feeding pattern together.

To get the maximum benefit from breastfeeding your baby, the NHS recommends that you exclusively breastfeed (breast milk only) for the first 6 months of your baby’s life, followed by breastfeeding alongside solid foods after 6 months. Breastfeeding into your baby’s 2nd year or beyond, alongside other foods, is ideal. You can find more helpful information from the NHS.

Finding the right advice is important. This NHS website contains a lot of helpful guidance and tips on how to feed your baby, expressing milk, overcoming challenges, healthy diets and advice on situations like returning to work and breastfeeding in public. Follow this link to the NHS website here.

Breastfeeding in Harrow is a service offered by local mums with expert advice available from a Health Visitor, Peer Supporter and Lactation Consultant at each group.

It is available to all mothers, regardless of whether you are breastfeeding, formula feeding or mixed. They provide advice on all aspects of feeding your baby, with volunteers that share their own breastfeeding experience.

Breastfeeding at Harrow host antenatal baby courses that involve a couple of two-hour classes that help you understand your baby and their behaviours, and free baby feeding support groups. See more information about Breastfeeding in Harrow.

What we eat plays a crucial role in our health. For children, eating healthily is important for good growth, development and well-being, with long-lasting effects.

A healthy diet helps to protect against childhood obesity and early tooth decay, and reduces the risk of diabetes, heart disease and poor mental health as an adult. Establishing good eating habits in early years sets the foundation for a healthy life.

Like the rest of the family, your child will benefit from a balanced diet but in child-sized portions. The four main food groups are:

• Starchy carbohydrates – bread, pasta, potatoes, rice, chapati
• Fruits and vegetables – fresh, frozen, tinned
• Protein – meat, fish, eggs, beans, lentils, tofu
• Dairy or dairy alternatives – milk, cheese, yoghurt, or unsweetened alternatives made from soya/ almond

For more information, visit:

• First Steps Nutrition Trust
• British Nutrition Foundation

Using this advice can be hard though. Taking small, manageable steps that work for you and your family will still have a big impact, and you can build on them. This might include using a new healthy recipe, having fewer takeaways in a week or slowly cutting down how many fizzy drinks are around the house.

You can help your child become more interested in eating healthily by involving them in meal planning and cooking, making it more fun for them. Eating as a family is also important and can help you to act as a role model by showing your children what healthy eating is.

Harrow Council support a number of programmes that could help you and your family eat more healthily. These include HENRY, the Healthy Early Years/Schools London programmes and Healthy Start.

You can find out more information about these options in the drop-down boxes below

HENRY is a national programme with strong connections in Harrow. They work in partnership with families, empowering you to take manageable and personalised steps to improve your children’s diet.

HENRY hold a free 8-week “Healthy Families Right from the Start” programme, after which nearly all families live a healthier life and 3 out of 4 parents have better emotional wellbeing. They also provide lots of useful advice on healthy recipes and fun everyday activities with your children.

• This is a link to a HENRY leaflet with key information
• Follow this link to the HENRY website for more information

The Healthy Early Years / Schools London programmes ensure that settings are meeting the appropriate nutritional standards expected of them, for example, by ensuring menus are healthy and balanced. They must have a policy or clear guidance and ensure there are opportunities to learn about food and healthy eating both in the curriculum and outside of this, for example, at mealtimes. Staff should be appropriately trained and parents/carers should be provided with access to information and advice, or signposted where appropriate.

Training such as Nutritional Guidelines for Early Years Providers is available from SS4E.

Healthy Start is a national scheme for low-income pregnant women and families with children under 4 years, which provides them with a Healthy Start card to buy fruit, vegetables, pulses, milk and to collect free vitamins for mother and child.

• See more information and discover whether you and your family are eligible
• Find out where you can collect the vitamins in Harrow

Children are at high risk of tooth decay and gum disease. In Harrow, 4 out of 10 5-year-olds have had experience of tooth decay.

These dental issues might not just cause your child pain and distress, but sleepless nights, missed school and potentially lead to hospital operations. This can have longer lasting impacts on speech development and school performance. Ensuring your child has good oral health prevents this from happening.

Brushing your child’s teeth is key. It’s important to start brushing as soon as your child’s first milk tooth breaks through. When brushing, use fluoride toothpaste for 2 minutes and do this twice a day – last thing at night before bed and on 1 other occasion. You can find more information from the NHS on brushing your child’s teeth, including pictures of how much toothpaste to use on the NHS website.

Excessive sugary food and drink causes tooth decay, so limiting these will help to improve your child’s oral health, as well as having many more benefits which you can learn about in our Healthy Eating advice.

It is important to take your child to the dentist when their first milk tooth appears. NHS dental care is free for children, and local NHS dentists are available (find a dentist). Here your child can have a check-up of their oral health, and the dentist will be able to give you advice on how to stop your child from developing tooth decay and gum disease.

This video by the NHS also provides some helpful information about teeth in children.

NHS dentists provide dental care to children for free. You can find your local NHS dentists using the NHS website.

You may also benefit from a supervised toothbrushing programme called Harrow Happy Smiles which has been set up in several schools. This helps to ensure children brush their teeth regularly and well, developing good oral health behaviours from an early age. Harrow Happy Smiles also work in partnership with parents to help them continue these practices at home.

Family Hubs are a Council run service that provide a whole range of support for you and your child. This support begins before birth with courses to help parents prepare for their child, and access to the Healthy Start initiative which provides food, milk and vitamins for pregnant women and young children, amongst many other sources of help.

There is one youth centre and nine Family Hubs in Harrow, which are:

• Cedars (Hub): delivery sites at The Pinner Centre, Chandos, Stanmore Park, and Whitefriars.
• Hillview (Hub): delivery sites at Kenmore Park, Gange, and Elmgrove

Find more information about the Family Hubs.

The Harrow Health Visiting service helps you to ensure that your newborn grows up to be a healthy child and reach their milestones. They also offer support for your own ability to cope with stress or ill health and any family problems that might be affecting your child. They can help you at their Hub or in your own home.

Find more information about the Harrow Health Visiting service.

These are some key dates in 2025 that aim to raise awareness of the importance of giving children the best possible start in life:

• World Oral Health Day – Thursday 20th March 2025
• National Smile Month – 12th May – 12th June 2025
• World Breastfeeding Week – 1-7 August 2025
• Healthy Eating Week – 10-14 June 2025