The school bell may signal the end of lessons, but for more than half a million Australian children each week, it doesn't mean the end of opportunities to be active.
A major Adelaide University study has found that outside school hours care services can play an important role in keeping children moving, with services that completed the Activated OSHC program showing substantial improvements in physical activity and screen time practices.
Assessing the impact of Activated OSHC – an online training and accreditation program designed to boost activity and reduce screen time – researchers found that OSHC services that had completed the program had:
- more than seven times the odds of meeting recommended physical activity and screen time targets before and after school;
- significantly greater increases (23%) in moderate-to-vigorous physical activity among children during before-school care.
- three times the odds of staff demonstrating positive physical activity-promoting behaviours.
Activated OSHC is a free, evidence-based program codesigned by Adelaide University and the OSHC sector, in collaboration with government and child health experts to help care providers get children be more active and spend less time on screens.
Trialled in almost 200 OSHC services collectively caring for approximately 10,000 children across Australia, the self-paced online training and accreditation program provides tips for creating an active environment, strategies to reduce screen time, and ways to encourage participation from all children regardless of age or ability.
Importantly, it helps the OSHC service create a physical activity and screen time policy that aligns with the Australian guidelines for OSHC.
Funded by the Australian Government's Medical Research Future Fund and the National Health and Medical Research Council, the program was developed in response to concerns about low levels of physical activity among Australian children.
Lead researcher, Adelaide University's Professor Carol Maher said outside school hours care offered an important opportunity to build more movement into children's day.
"Every week, more than 500,000 Australian children spend time in outside school hours care, so there's a real opportunity for children to be more active," Prof Maher said.
"Rather than placing the responsibility entirely on children and parents, Activated OSHC focuses on the environment around children – how staff are trained, the activities on offer and the policies services have in place.
"Our previous research showed enormous variation between services in how active children were, with children spending around 60% of their time in after-school care inactive .
"What this study shows is that when services complete the program– by training staff and embedding healthier practices into their policies – we can create environments that better support children to be active."
But achieving accreditation was challenging in the context of busy OSHC services. While 80% of intervention services registered for the program, fewer than half completed all the training and policy requirements needed for accreditation.
Across all intervention services, including those that did not complete accreditation, there was no significant improvement in overall guideline adherence or children's physical activity. This suggests that making an intervention available is not enough on its own, and that additional implementation support may be needed to help more services complete the program.
Professor Maher said the contrast highlighted one of the biggest challenges facing health programs – turning good intentions into lasting change.
"Making a program available is only part of the solution. Services need the time and practical support to put those changes into practice and sustain them," Prof Maher said.
"While fewer than half of the services completed accreditation, those that did showed meaningful improvements in staff practices, their environment and children's activity.
"The challenge now is helping more services get there."
Future research will explore different ways of helping more services successfully implement the program, including additional implementation support and peer learning approaches, as well as whether the program can be successfully replicated internationally.
