Research Papers

Factors that influence the health and educational wellbeing of a child, the case of Grindon

1.0 Introduction

   The overall wellbeing of a child depends on diverse social, cultural, economic, health, and educational factors. Socially, a child needs an environment that allows for creating relationships with his/her peers and the elderly people which leads to development of language and communication and general positive relations. Through socialization, the child learns how to perform basic roles in the society thus; in the absence of positive socialization, there could be a negative effect on the child’s well being. Additionally, the well being of a child is highly affected by cultural factors such as the beliefs, norms and lifestyles in the society (Zanotti et al, 2012). Housing styles and structures are some of the examples. This is because cultural factors determine what people do and what they consider right or wrong. Economically, a child needs an environment where there is access to quality food, education, clothing and sanitations which are only available when there parenting roles are emphasized. For this reason, children from different family backgrounds have different socializations with those coming from problematic families neglected. Problematic families may be those where parents are not accessible to children and are unable to support children’s basic needs such as care, education and food. Besides, the well being of a child is highly dependent on psychological and emotional factors. For instance, Bradshaw (2011) opine that emotional discomfort is widely known to lower concentration among children in their mid childhood years (National Institute for Health and clinical excellence - NICE, 2012). As a result, it is impossible that such children can perform well in their academic work and other chores assigned to them. Generally, children from vulnerable family backgrounds also risk starting their elementary education at a very late age hence extended problems in their adulthood.

From the analysis of Papp (2012), the well-being of children is also affected by their health and education. Health could be affected by the level of exposure of children to lifestyles that affect the mental, social and sexual lives of vulnerable children especially where parenting is a big problem. In the UK, not many mothers find time to socialize with their children. As a result, children rarely get enough breast milk and this leads to a retarded brain development process. Similarly, children are exposed to junk foods very early in life leading to many health challenges especially obesity.

Therefore, it is indeed true to argue that the overall wellbeing of a child depends on a multiple of factors such as social, cultural, economic, health and educational factors. A deficiency in any of these factors would affect the well being of children negatively. This research paper is endeavored to provide an insight health and education factors that affect the well being of children in the Grindon community with major factors dwelt about being obesity and breast feeding of children and parental involvement in children’s activities. The study starts with a background of the Grindon community, a literature review, a methodology into data collection and finally discusses findings and provides recommendations.

2.0 Background information

Grindon is a Community described as suburban located about three miles to the West of the Sunderland city in the UK with a population of about 280,300 as compiled in 2009. Generally, as at September 2008 according to the Centre for cities’ (2009) the unemployment versus employment rates were recorded as 7.9 and 69.8. Moreover, the Sunderland state experiences a negative population growth rate of -0.4% an implication that many couples opt not to have children or may be have just one child. Rating the economic index from 1 to 64, Sunderland’s’ economy is rated at 62, an indication of a strained economy in compared to other states in the UK. In general, the percent of employees in Sunderland’s private services was 47.7 while the percentage of employees on highly skilled employment stood at 33.0% in 2009 (Centre for cities, 2009). The average working age in this state according to the findings of UNICEF (2007) is 20.3 years. Surprisingly, Sunderland performs economically well with the GVA per capita of 15317 in 2005 with an average gross weekly pay per employed person being 370 pounds.

On another aspect, Sunderland has a lower level of crime that is below the national average. UK’s crime level is about 19.3% while that of Sunderland is approximately 7.6 (Centre for cities, 2009). Because of a good economy, the male expectancy rate in 2005 was 75.2%. Due to high economic performance, parents have problems socializing with their children who mainly spend few hours a day by the children. The alternative to breastfeeding in many places in Sunderland is providing cow milk for children or squeezing breast milk and leaving it with the caretakers or baby-care units for feeding, a practice of more than 30% of the community most of whom work in high profile employments. There is also an increasing number of childhood obesity in Grindon community, more than 22% of all children below five years suffering extreme obese conditions.

Although an OECD (2009) report indicates high levels of immunization rates in this city falling above 80%, there is an increasing fear that partial breastfeeding of child will have a great impact on children immunity noting that breast milk offers a child the best protection against diseases of all sorts. Among school going children, Finland has the best scores of literacy in English, mathematics and sciences with Sunderland falling slightly above average with an index of 0.25. This is attributed to the high economic circumstances in Sunderland where most parents can afford quality education. However, Papp (2012) asserts that the major factor affecting educational scores is lack of parental involvement in educational activities.

3.0 Factors affecting the Health well being of children

The key health issues that influence the child's wellbeing in health are breastfeeding, and child obesity. As noted earlier, many parents lack enough time to take care after their children due to their lifestyles and economic conditions. As a result, children are exposed to foreign people early in life (as early as one month old). Weaning is also started earlier than the recommended six months with the average weaning age in Sunderland being 1.4 months. Weaning, according to NICE (2012) is described as the introduction of other foods other than the mother’s breast milk to a child. These foods often lead to high carbohydrates in take causing obesity conditions to very young children even those yet to attain five years old. Below is a cross examination of these two factors: breast feeding and obesity.

i) Breast feeding

Breastfeeding is defined as the process of bonding between the mother and her baby through the physical suckling of the mother’s milk (Papp, 2012). In this case, breastfeeding is only understood as so if the baby interacts with the mother through suckling thus, bottled milk, even if squeezed from the mother’s breast, is  not considered as breast feeding. Studies reveal that breast feeding is associated to the quality of motor skills among children, communication development, intelligence, reduced mortality and improved immune system (NICE, 2012). Other than children gaining from breast feeding, other studies have also shown that mothers get emotional and physical advantages through the breast feeding process. It is also a sure ways that helps children to socialize with their mothers and gain emotional bonding and attachment.

Breast milk serves many benefits to children. Unlike other sources of milk, the mother’s milk is always offered at the right temperature required for a child’s body and contains well balanced nutrients that do not overload the digestive system of the child (Papp, 2012). While breast feeding, a child will normally have some mouth and body muscle exercises that are good for physical and emotional growth. Lack of proper breast feeding therefore denies the child and the mother these benefits and would be an indicator of ill health for children

On understanding that breastfeeding occurs within the family context and that many women do not like the practice of breast feeding babies with a majority just breast feeding for a maximum of 4 months in the Grindon community, a number of campaigns have been set up to reduce this vise (Sunderland, 2006). It is also revealed that just about 41% of women in the UK breast feed their children adequately. A majority of those breast feeding mothers are those aged above 30years and those who finished school after 18 years of age. In Sunderland, only about three in 10 women breast feed their children (Armstrong and Reilly, 2002).

One of the campaigns has targeted fathers because, seemingly, they can encourage or discourage mothers from breast feeding (Papp, 2012). This campaign in Grindon community is named Bosom buddies. Such campaigns aim at increasing emotional attachment of fathers to their wives and babies and stimulate a breast feeding behavior. Other campaigns in breast feeding have been adopted as a control for pregnancies. Targeting mainly women and mothers, the campaign encourages mothers to breast as an alternative method of family planning. Theoretically, extended breast feeding prevents the advance of menstrual cycle (ovulation) in women as long as milk hormones are active. According to Reilly et al (2005), women who tend to get children in close succession have a history of not breastfeeding their children long enough. This campaign has been successful mainly among the poor states but its efficiency in economically rich cities is yet to be discovered.

The above practices and campaigns are aimed at promoting increased prevalence of breastfeeding and by extension, improved child wellbeing. As already mentioned breastfeeding is the only sure way of ensuring child hygiene in terms of food and contains balanced nutrients that improve immunity. Breastfeeding a child for the first six months as argues Reilly et al (2003), promotes the well being of that child by providing stable immunity; hence, together with immunization practices by the government, the child will be safe from common childhood diseases and will hardly suffer from obese conditions.

 ii) Child obesity

Obesity is a situation that occurs not only in children but also in adults especially women because of poor feeding habits (Bird et al., 2010). Obesity is characterized by high fat levels in body organs mainly because of ingestion of junk food and a lot of carbohydrates. This condition, according to American Occupational Therapy association (2012) is also defined as prevalence of high body as above the 95^th percentile for people (children) of the same gender and age. In children, obesity generally affects the well being negatively. Although obesity is commonly known to be a nutritional problem (i.e. unhealthy eating), studies have also linked it to genetic factors, family obesity history, lack of physical activities and sometimes caused due to medical conditions (NICE, 2012). However, Papp (2012) argues that a poorly balanced diet causes high obesity risks for children.

Obesity is not only a condition that is feared for bad health such as easiness of contracting diseases, it is also associated with many other effects. For instance, children tend to have low self esteem when interacting with normal ones and will often be rejected or isolate themselves from the rest because of their body differences. A study by American Occupational Therapy association (2012) reported that obesity also increases the risk of contracting type 2 diabetes, asthma, hypertension and high blood pressure, fatty liver disease, cardiovascular diseases and high cholesterol. Due to obesity conditions, children may suffer from decreased flexibility in joints and orthopedic challenges that lead to low participation in physical play; inability to develop the recommended sleep patterns among children, a condition referred to as sleep apnea (Bird et al., 2010). This often limits the child’s energy level hence poor attention at school.

Obese children in Grindon community are often stigmatized (weight stigma) for social attributes such as laziness, poor self control etc and these are what often leads to feelings of loneliness, low esteem, withdrawal and inability to make friends. Unfortunately in the community, obesity is not only a problem among wealthy families but also the poorest ones. According to UNICEF (2007), children living under abject poverty are at the highest risk of becoming overweight because they can hardly afford nutritional foods, access to youth information on nutrition and local recreation centers and cannot afford fees to participate in team sports. Another high risk group in Grindon community includes children with developmental disabilities are more 40% more likely to become obese not because of nutrition but conditions such as pain, de-conditioning, medications increasing weight gain and social isolation (Reilly, 2005).

There are various ways through which obesity can be brought to book in Grindon community. For instance, occupational therapy can be of great help. In this health intervention therapy, focus is not on weight loss but healthy lifestyles (Piovesan et al, 2010). To address childhood obesity, occupational therapy is applied wherever children are found such as home, school, church, playgrounds etc. Priorities include healthy food consumption, engagement into physical activities and strategies for reducing weight and weight related stigmas

4.0 Factors affecting children in Education well being

Good education presents children with better opportunities and future aspirations. This can only be achieved through parents-teachers collaborative efforts aimed at improving children's educational achievements in schools. Generally, a parent should find time to help children through school work. This may include helping through home works or facilitating children learning. The home environment as cites Walker et al (2011), should be good enough to encourage children to develop a reading culture for example provision of story books and a reading area. This is one of the factors that can improve children’s educational scores, their behavior and attendance.

In general, Sunderland scores in education are much lower compared to other parts of the UK. For instance, it is rated at position 24 out of a total of 29 indicating that its performance in academics is below average. From this perspective, NICE (2012) argues that a parent’s role in the early childhood development stages can improve or degrade a child’s overall academic performance and scores for literacy and arithmetic skills because “good quality home learning contributes more to children’s intellectual and social development than parental occupation, education or income”. If the parents got involvement in children learning behaviors at home, there are some benefits they could add to their children for example creating a learning culture, improving the children’s skills and confidence.

However, although there is a general economic growth in the Grindon community, there is an obvious limitation to teachers and parental collaboration and involvement in children’s’ learning behavior. As earlier reiterated, parents with affluent backgrounds have limited socialization and bonding time with children and on the other side, poverty and unemployment deprives of parents the ability to offer their children quality education for less affluent families (Bradshaw, Hoelscher and Richardson, 2007). Therefore, to improve education well being among children in Grindon community, there is the need to empower many people into education because a parent with literacy challenges will be of no help to his/her children. It is also paramount that empowerment focuses on reducing poverty levels so that as many parents as possible can afford to guide their children in terms of education and health which are children’s rights according to UNICEF (2007).

5.0 Methodology

The research carried out was based on a descriptive survey design and data collected using both primary and secondary collection instruments to analyze factors that affect children’s well being in education and health in Grindon community in Sunderland, UK. The reason for the choice of a descriptive survey was informed by the fact that the research needed a lot of quantitative data which could probably be obtained through this design (Donald and Pamela, 2003). Descriptive design is also known to be easy to conduct because information is only required to be filled in questionnaires. Besides, it is easier to analyze survey design research because it provides quantitative, statistical and numerical data (Donald and Pamela, 2003). In this light, this study needs a lot of quantitative data to be able to understand breast feeding, obesity and education patterns in Sunderland. However qualitative data was also obtained for various interpretations and analyses especially on health and education influential factors.

Secondary data collection was through books, reports, and journals derived from children publications such as UNICEF and OECD which are specialized publishers of children material. Further secondary data was derived from websites and books with statistical information about Sunderland. Secondary sources are useful because they complement primary data and they provide data and information that cannot be used for generalization. Under primary data collection method, a questionnaire was used to collect data from 15 mothers in Glyndon community in Sunderland, UK. This would assist in in-depth analysis of the problem of the study. The use of a questionnaire was appropriate because according to Mugenda and Mugenda (2003), it is easy to survey; it saves time, and allows collection of data that could be used for in-depth analysis.

Questionnaires were distributed through self administration to save on time that respondents take to provide information. Respondents derived from Glyndon community in Sunderland were selected through random sampling and comprised of mothers (preferably those) with children. Upon the return of questionnaires, data was coded and analyzed through excel for tables, charts and graphs representing quantitative data collected.

6.0 RESULTS, ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION

The results obtained from this research were as below. First, the return rate was 99.9% indicating that all questionnaires were returned as expected. The table below shows findings for the age of respondents

Age	Frequency	Percent
18-24	8	53.3
25- 34	5	33.3
35-45	2	13.4
TOTAL	N=15	100.0

Many of the respondents were aged between 18 and 24 years forming more than 53% of the population. Nearly a third of the respondents were aged 25-35 years while the rest, 13.4%, were aged 35-45 years. Thus, many parents in the Grindon community in Sunderland are the young generation. This finding is supported by the study of Bradshaw, Hoelscher & Richardson (2007), which showed that young mothers in the UK were many and many were below 18 years of age thus, were not well versed with child bearing needs such as nutrition. The table below shows the findings for the educational level of the respondents.

Educational level	Frequency	Percent
High School	5	33.3
Tertiary	7	46.7
College/university	3	20.0
TOTAL	N=15	100.0

From the table, majority are tertiary education leavers making up to 476.7% of the study population, a third (33.3%) have learned up to high school while the rest, one-fifth, have attained college and university education. Generally, it can be noted that women in Grindon community are fairly educated to know how to take care of the education and healthcare needs of their children. The table shows the number of children that mothers have.

Number of children	Frequency	Percent
1-2	10	66.7
2 and above	5	33.3
TOTAL	N=15	100.0

Many mothers (more than 66%) in Grindon community in Sunderland opt to have just one or two kids while about a third of the mothers can get two or more children. Using this information, it can be noted that the future of the community is at risk of extinction since the results indicate a negative birth rate where two people combine to have only one child. Generally, Kiernan and Mensah (2009) note that the population of the UK is decreasing overall and there are campaigns encouraging couples to give birth. However, according to the study by Han, Lawlo and Kimm (2010), this is advantageous because the parents place all their attention to the one child hence maximum care. Data was also collected about employment patterns among women in Grindon community and the results are tabulated.

Employment status	Frequency	Percent
Employed	8	53.3
Self-employed	2	13.4
No source of income	5	33.3
TOTAL	N=15	100.0

Data about employment denotes that a majority of the women/mothers are employment in formal setup. In this case, 53.3% of the mothers are employed, 33.3% have no source of income while 13.4% are self employed. Although many are in employment, the more than one third of mothers without an income source information is alarming and this could mean that their children get poor health care and education because they are helpless.

Asked whether they breast fed their children, the mothers interviewed responded half in affirmative and the other half in the contrary. That is to say, about 53.3% of women said they breast fed their babies while more than 47% did not. The study enquired why the 47% of the mother did not breast feed and some of the reasons that were received include too much engagement at the work place i.e. lack of time to breast feed, others claimed that they children were about the breast feeding age while some mothers pointed out that they had commercial and alternative ways of feeding their babies. This means that children could grow up with many childhood challenges such as poor immunity and risk of obesity because of nutritional insensitivity. Since breast milk has been approved to help in brain development, about 47% of children born in Grindon community could be suffering from motor deficiency and could be performing poorly in education. Another research conducted in the UK showed that about 45% of women in UK and about 30% in Sunderland do not breast feed at all despite the fact that they do not have reasons for such decisions (Cole et al, 2000)

It was also sought whether mothers belonged to any of the programs in the community that assist mothers in breastfeeding. Generally, a majority answered in affirmative. 67% or two thirds said they did while about 33% said they did not belong to any program. Among those who belonged to a breastfeeding program, they said they experienced benefits such as being strongly bonded to their children emotionally and that they observed a reduced illness rate among their children. There was also an observation that many women did not experience post natal complications because of breast feeding and they had saved the costs of baby sitters whom they used to give food so that their babies could be fed while they were away.

Mothers were also asked to rate the extent to which they agreed with each of the following statements tabulated about breastfeeding using a Likert scale where 5-showed strong agreement and 1-strong disagreement results are as follows:

Health and educational wellbeing of the child.	Mean coefficient
Breastfeeding provides your baby with the ideal form of nutrition good for its wellbeing.	4.3
Overweight or clinical obese threatens the health of a child.	3.8
Most parents do not read to their Children at home	2.1

From the table, women with a mean coefficient of 4.3 strongly believe that breastfeeding provides the baby with the ideal form of nutrition good for their wellbeing. What is not clear is why a whole 47% of the women do not breast feed yet they understand the importance of breastfeeding. Similarly, mothers rated with a mean coefficient of 3.8 the fact that overweight or clinical obese threatens the health of a child denoting that majority either agreed or strongly agreed to the statement. However, a negative response was obtained basing on the hypothesis that most parents do not read to their Children at home. Rated with a mean coefficient of 2.1, it can be noted that the educational achievements of the parents are enough to allow them assist their children academically at least up to the primary school level.

7.0 Conclusions

This study was setup to analyze the factors that affect the child’s well being in terms of health and education. From the literature review and the collected data, the major factors that affect the well being of children in Grindon community, Sunderland UK health wise are breast feeding challenges and obesity. The study found out that mothers in Grindon community did not really understand the need to breast feed their children for the longest possible time because 47% of the women actually did not breast feed. Preliminary information showed that most mothers in the community breast fed their children for about four months only yet this exercise would help improve the immunity of the child and the experience of the mother all the same time.

Similarly, obesity was identified as a major health challenge among children mainly caused by lack of proper guidance in nutritional matters of children among their parents and lack of exercises. Although other factors could be associated to obesity conditions among children, these two were major. Other than health, factors affecting the well being of children education wise were mainly identified as parental involvement in the child’s educational activities. Lack of interest in children learning process by parents and inability to provide a learning environment for children probably due to poverty were identified some of the reasons for poor academic scores among children in Grindon community.

However, the overall wellbeing of a child depends on diverse social, cultural, economic, health, and educational factors which must be observed all the time. Carrying out this research has been very helpful since it has no only taught me how to bond with my children but also how and why I should make sure a baby is breast fed and subjected to academic scrutiny and physical exercises. Therefore, children need not only the support of the parent but also the presence of those parents for bonding.

8.0 Recommendations

While carrying out this research, there were a number of gaps that were identified in the literature. For instance, whereas the literature asks mothers to breast feed child, it does provide the benefits of this exercise but fails to tell mothers the disadvantages of not breastfeeding. It is a natural process that when a mother delivers a baby, they body forms up milk. Since the milk should be consumed by the baby, failing to breast feed can have adverse effects to the mother such as development of breast cancer and the risk of abnormal hormonal functioning. In this case the ovaries become confuse on the production of milk hormones that are not utilized and this could be a source of reproduction system disorders. Another major gap identified in the literature that perhaps require further research is on the aspect of parental guidance to child’s academic achievements. One would ask, do all children who perform well get parental guidance at home? Another would ask, do all children from poor families (or even orphans) score poorly in academics just because they hardly get parental guidance? Answering these questions leads to the fallacy that parental involvement in childhood education well being needs further research.

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