Skip to 0 minutes and 18 seconds Hello, everybody. My name’s Cliff Bennett, and I’m the chief nurse and director for maternity and early years at Public Health England. And I’m really thrilled to have been asked to do an introduction for this fabulous course that you’re about to embark on. In my role as the director of maternity and earlier. So I’m very well aware that what happens to us in childhood sets the foundations for health and wellbeing throughout our lives. And and even more that what happens in the early years impacts on a happy and healthy childhood. So the work that you do is absolutely vital to the national effort to give our children the best start in life.
Skip to 0 minutes and 55 seconds One of the things that we’ve learned over the last few years is the benefits of physical activity in health and wellbeing at all ages from the very smallest babies. When we start to give them tummy time and to support their heads and neck movements by watching things through to the toddler age groups, really, really important. It is now recommended that the youngest children, for example, toddlers, want to do have 180 active minutes a day. And that can be a variety of things, obviously, for the youngest of that age range, learning to stand up, learning to walk, crawling around, playing.
Skip to 1 minute and 36 seconds And then as children come towards their second, third birthdays, lots of outdoor play, lots of movement, learning to ride a bike, etcetera, etcetera. Really important and really important throughout childhood, not only actually for physical development, but for children’s mental and emotional health as well. Learning to play, learning to be outside without the children. All really important things for the happy, healthy childhood that we want our children to have. And of course, conversely, if children aren’t active, they’re more likely to run into problems with their health. And we know that we have too many children who are overweight and could become obese in this country.
Skip to 2 minutes and 20 seconds And we really need to make sure that all our children are active to try to avoid some of those complications. And, of course, everybody who’s connected with children has a role to play. Parents input is vital. And you and your role in mind can support families to help their children to be active. Particularly perhaps when children have a disability or require extra assistance to actually have that have that activity for all children. The early years workforce is absolutely critical in ensuring that we can use physical activity to help all children have the best start in life.
Skip to 3 minutes and 0 seconds And this course will give you some further knowledge and some further insights into just how those processes work to make sure children can thrive. And also some ideas for how to incorporate physical activity into play. So thank you again for all the fabulous work that you do with our youngest children. And I do hope that you enjoy this course and that you find it useful. And we can really work together to promote physical activity as a vital part of a happy, healthy childhood. Thank you.
