Understanding parent and staff perspectives on bicycle usage in nurseries and at home

ABSTRACT

This paper describes how eight London nurseries examined whether better use of bicycles would strengthen children’s physical activity as a step to reducing child obesity. The nurseries are part of a social enterprise which offers one-third of the 4200 nursery places to children from poor and disadvantaged families/communities where rates of child obesity are high and increasing. The research was instigated because the nurseries built a partnership with Bikeworks which provided free bikes and staff wanted to ensure they were using them effectively to benefit children. Parents were involved but also asked a specific question about interest in a bike lending scheme. The paper concluded that staff became more observant of how they could enhance their practice using bikes to support children’s physical and sociolinguistic development. It heightened the importance of observation of the children but also in identifying barriers such as poor cycling surface and state of bike repairs. Parents considered bikes to be a key part of their children’s nursery life especially extending physical skills but were divided evenly about the value of introducing a bike lending scheme.

KEYWORDS:

• Bicycles
• child obesity
• healthy lifestyles, physical development
• bicycle loan scheme
• nursery

Acknowledgement

Thank you to the London Mayor Child Obesity Taskforce for Supporting the Evaluation of this Study

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Greater London Authority.