Our Wellbeing Service organised some health eating workshops with food charity Prept for young people managing their diabetes.
Being diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes can have a big effect on a young person; all of a sudden, the life that you expected has changed. You understand that you now have to take insulin for the rest of your life to manage blood glucose levels in your body.
You will have to constantly monitor what you eat and drink, you need to learn how to regularly check your blood sugar levels, and you will need to have regular appointments to monitor your condition.
This can be overwhelming for a young person and can make them feel isolated, scared and different from their friends.
But the diabetes team at the Royal Alexandra Children’s Hospital are there to help. They work with young people to help them learn how to manage their condition, stay healthy and enjoy a normal life.
A big part of managing diabetes is learning how to have a healthy diet that supports and helps manage glucose levels. This can be a real learning curve for many young people as all of a sudden food can become an issue and they might believe that they can’t enjoy all the things they did before.
Which is why our Wellbeing Service, based at The Royal Alex, worked with the Diabetes Team to organise some healthy eating sessions with food charity Prept, kindly funded by Higgidy and The Cullum Family Trust.
Prept is a charity that helps teach young people cooking skills to establish healthy relationships with food. They help set young people up with positive attitudes around food and cooking, so they are prepared for life; something particularly important for children with a health conditions such as diabetes.
These sessions were aimed at showing young people how to make delicious food through a diabetes-focused lens, adapting recipes for their needs and how to count the carbohydrates in different foods.
Across the sessions, Prept Chef Ellie Ladden worked with 15 young people to prepare some delicious seasonal dishes, including a fresh summer salad and a lovely cheesecake pudding.
Then, in the second session, a specialist dietician from the Diabetes Team joined the group to provide tailored education and guidance around how to monitor recipes and food intake so they support their glucose levels.
All the children and young people who took part really enjoyed it with one commenting, “I really enjoyed making the salad and using new
skills. Thank you!” and another adding, “Very healthy food I love, and a great teacher.”
Jess Linton, Wellbeing Service Manager at Rockinghorse, was really pleased with how the sessions went. She said, “It’s been wonderful to hear how the confidence of these young people around food has grown during these sessions and that they would love to engage in more sessions like this.
“Being diagnosed with diabetes can be really confusing and difficult to understand but being able to offer at least a little information, and fun, can really help to de-stigmatise the condition and give them some confidence about how to manage their condition in the future.
“Thanks to Prept for providing such great sessions and a big thank you to Ronald McDonald House who let us use their kitchen in The Alex, which really helped make the sessions go smoothly!”
The Wellbeing Service provides a range of different activities to help support young people’s mental health and wellbeing while visiting or staying in The Royal Alex. Keep an eye out on our website to find out more or click here.
