Saint Lucia hosts early childhood health promotion training session

Castries, Saint Lucia: Early childhood development providers in Babonneau receive training and tools to support healthy outcomes for young children. The Bureau of Health Education within the Ministry of Health, Wellness and Elderly Affairs recently conducted health promotion assessments at a number of early childhood development centres in an effort to promote healthy behaviours amongst young children.

In response to the assessments, the department has started implementing a series of training sessions to address the needs identified.

The training sessions seek to build the capacity of early childhood development providers in their approach to ensuring the health and wellbeing of the children in their care.

Family Life Educator Laurentia Maylor spoke on the need to undertake this workshop.

“This came about as a result of a need that exist in the region. In discussion with the providers, certain issues arise and we realize there is a gap and the need to fill the gap and hence the reason the workshop came on stream. This workshop we are hoping that at the end of it, that providers will have the skills as well as the education to better meet the needs of those young children in their care.”

Maylor says other early childhood development providers around the island will also gain the necessary knowledge and skills to assist them with ensuring healthy practices in children.

“The hope is for us to implement this workshop in other regions throughout the island, and by so doing, we think we will have that standard information so everybody will build that capacity to better do what they are doing in terms of working with children.”

The training focused on areas such as nutrition for preschoolers, small kitchen gardening, stress management and vaccination, to name a few.