We are absolutely delighted that HENRY has been awarded a brand new 3 year contract in Hackney and the City of London. It means we will be supporting thousands of families with babies and young children to have a healthy, happy start in life so that they flourish throughout childhood and beyond.

Our Healthy Families programme has been delivered in Hackney for several years and has likely contributed to a significant drop in the local child obesity rate at age 5 from 15.9% 10 years ago, to 12.7% today.

This exciting new service will build on this good work and the reputation of HENRY locally to provide:

• 8 week Healthy Families programmes across all children’s centre clusters
• Our new range of standalone workshops on key topics such as introducing solid food, eating well for less, and Let’s get active
• Management of the national Healthy Start scheme for vitamins and healthy food vouchers. We will make these available through children’s centres to increase local take-up and repeat take-up of the scheme. This will be available to all local parents (not just those on low incomes).
• Supporting early years settings to meet government food standards often known as Eat Better, Start Better.
• Training all health and early years practitioners across the borough to identify children at risk of obesity, raise the issue of lifestyle with parents in a way that is sensitive and effective, and build parental motivation to access the rest of the service.

This service is running from April 2018 and more information will be available on our website shortly, for parents and practitioners.