Obesity fight to lose funding (From Swindon Advertiser)

Obesity fight to lose funding

2:00pm Friday 29th July 2011 in News By Adam Kula

WORK to tackle obesity in youngsters in the town is working, but a big chunk of funding for anti-obesity schemes is about to come to an end.

For the past three years, the NHS has had a £100,000 annual government grant for schemes including exercise programmes for the elderly and those with mental health problems.

But this stands to end next year, which will reduce the level of anti-obesity grants by around a quarter.

In a report to the council’s health committee on Wednesday, latest figures show that Swindon hit its targets for keeping down obesity – but only just.

For 2009/10, the latest year for which figures are available, 210 of the 2,232 four to five-year-olds entering school were obese, which works out as 9.4 per cent.

This was just below the target of 10 per cent, which was almost identical to the previous year.

And for 10 to 11-year-olds, the figure had hit 345, or 16.7 per cent, a mere 0.54 per cent below the target, and showed a rise on the 2008/9 figures. However, there had been a significant drop from about 19 per cent in 2007/8.

This is just the children who are obese – a similar number were classed as being overweight.

In a statement, Cherry Jones, acting joint director of public health, said: “Tackling obesity is a key priority for NHS Swindon and our partners.

“Preventing obesity requires changes in the behaviour of individuals – children and families and of society in general. We are pleased that we are seeing results from many of the initiatives that have been introduced to educate and raise awareness about obesity.

“We will continue to work closely with partners across Swindon to promote and champion living healthy lifestyles.”

Some other places have already seen government support for fat-fighting programmes fall.

Tony McAteer, headteacher of Holy Rood Junior School, said he had already seen budgets for such programmes shrink, with cuts to a government-backed after-school sports scheme which they use kicking in from next year.

“Of course it can’t help the problem. There are other initiatives like the Healthy Schools scheme. Those aren’t as well supported now as in previous years. That comes down to funding,” he said.

“Part of that is obviously to do with getting children to have more exercise and a better diet.

“In more recent years, there have been cutbacks and some of these programmes have been hit.

“The support is not there, but having said that we have had a lot of support over the years. It’s down to individual schools to try and promote this thing.

“With many government programmes, a lot of funding is pumped in at the early stages, in the hope that these will become embedded in schools. When you get it going you continue to fund it yourself.

“And it comes down to individual schools having that as a priority. School funding is always going to be a problem. Schools have to prioritise.”