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The Early Years Alliance has today launched the Alliance Nutrition Support Programme, offering early years settings tailored advice and support from expert dieticians and nutritionists.  

The early years of a child’s life are crucial when it comes to lifelong health; what they eat, and the habits they develop around food when they’re young, set the pattern for the rest of their lives. 

Nurseries, pre-schools and childminders have a key role to play in this; however, it can often be a challenging task. Not only do settings have to balance offering healthy and balanced meals and snacks with dietary preferences and allergies, but obstacles such as food refusal and creating positive eating environments can make nutrition provision complicated.   

To support settings in this, the Nutrition Support Programme aims to empower early years providers to offer nutritious and engaging food, while supporting children to learn about the importance of a healthy diet.  

The Alliance’s team of qualified dieticians and nutritionists, with experience of supporting children in the early years, will work with setting managers, educators and cooks on a range of topics including menu reviews and allergens advice.  

The programme is split into the following three levels of support to enable settings to tailor support to best suit their needs: 

• First Steps Package: provides 10 hours of support to guide improvements in food provision.  

• Quality Mark Package: provides 22 hours of support to achieve the programme’s detailed assessed award, helping settings exceed EYFS requirements.  

• Premium Package: provides 40 hours of comprehensive support across all aspects of healthy eating and good hydration. 

Further information about Alliance Nutrition Support Programme is available here  . All providers who register their interest for the programme will receive a free 30-minute taster support session. 

Free nutrition resources for early years providers 

To celebrate the launch of the Nutrition Support Programme, the Alliance has today launched a new free resource pack on nutrition and healthy eating in the early years. The resource pack includes a range of useful advice and information, including menu advice, guidance on creating healthy habits and food activity ideas, and can be accessed here:  

From October 2023, the Alliance will also be running a series of free virtual Alliance Connect events on the importance of nutrition in early years settings. The sessions will cover a range of topics including creating a positive mealtime environment, dietary requirements and hydration.  

The first session, which will take place Thursday 5 October from 6.30pm - 7.30pm, will focus on planning balanced menus for children in the early years, and providers can ensure they are meeting national recommended nutrition guidelines and gain confidence in planning healthy menus for children.  

More details on the event, and how to sign up, are available at:  

Commenting, Michael Freeston, director of quality improvement at the Alliance, said: “We are proud to offer early years providers a comprehensive package of nutrition support, tailored to each setting’s individual needs.  

“Ranging from menu reviews, allergen advice and food avoidance support, to webinars and parent-focused sessions, the Nutrition Support Programme will equip educators, managers and setting chefs with a variety of extensive and interactive guidance from expert dieticians and nutritionists with an in-depth knowledge and experience of early years nutrition. 

“We know that nutrition is proven to have a significant impact on a child’s short and long-term life chances, and through our Nutrition Support Programme, we hope providers will feel well-equipped to play a key role in ensuring this.”