Our Mission
We build the UK’s capability to recognise and support children’s feeding development, through evidence, training, advocacy, and research, and we signpost families to high-quality clinical care.
Feeding skills are fundamental to fuelling children’s health, learning and wellbeing. We all recognise that good nutrition underpins every child’s ability to grow, participate and reach their full potential. But what happens when children struggle to get the fuel in? When feeding development is disrupted, it can create barriers to nutrition, confidence, participation and learning.
For many children, particularly those with additional medical or special educational needs, developmental differences can make learning to eat far more complex than is often understood. Across the world, on average, about 25% of children will struggle with feeding at some point during the first 10 years of life.
Feeding development sits “between systems”, with no dedicated teams or resources in Health, Education or Food Policy dedicated to supporting children with feeding differences before they reach crisis point. This leaves a large group of children and families to struggle alone, difficulties escalate and we see preventable, negative impact on children’s health, education and wellbeing.
The Feeding Trust exists to improve understanding and support for children’s feeding development and food education. Our ambition is to create a system change that brings feeding development to the mainstream – recognised as a foundational part of every child’s health, development and inclusion.
Difficulties with Feeding Development:
Paediatric Feeding Disorder (PFD)
PFD is a complex developmental condition that can have long term physical and mental health consequences.
It is characterised by the skills and difficulties related to feeding and eating, including problems with sucking, swallowing, chewing, or self-feeding.
The diagnosis takes into account the functional impact of these difficulties for the child (their overall development, growth, and participation in daily activities) and the family (the social and environmental consequences).
When a child has PFD it can mean that eating can be both extremely difficult and at times painful. A frequent symptom of PFD is a severely limited diet.
Children with PFD have significant challenges in four different areas that impact their eating.
Gastro symptoms associated with eating/drinking (vomiting, constipation), food allergies, crying, arching, coughing, sweating, colour changes when eating and/or drinking, physical discomfort when eating/drinking, recurring upper respiratory tract infections, chronic fatigue, swallowing difficulties, iron deficiency, reflux and abdominal pain.
MEDICAL
Difficulty with mealtime participation across all social contexts (home, nursery/school, restaurants, parties etc), behaviours of distress at mealtimes, need for distraction or rewards for eating, feeding difficulties significantly impacting on family routines and activities.
PSYCHOLOGICAL
Difficulty self-feeding, delayed co-ordination, poor oral motor skills, difficulty with posture, difficulty chewing food, gagging on food, only able to manage a limited range of textures, need for special strategies, positioning or equipment, excessively long (> 30 minutes) or short meals (<5 minutes), difficulty managing the sensory properties of mealtimes (tastes, smells, sounds, feel, sight of food).
SKILL
Difficulty eating or drinking enough to grow and stay hydrated, nutritional deficiencies, need for nutritional supplements, limited dietary diversity.
NUTRITIONAL
Our Challenge
Children’s feeding difficulties are poorly understood and frequently dismissed.
PFD is developmental condition that emerges in early childhood, where children have difficulty learning to eat.
It can be compared to other developmental conditions such as:
Dyspraxia
Difficulty with learning to move and co-ordinate the body.
Dyslexia
Difficulty with learning to read and write.
Speech & Language Disorders
Difficulty with learning to talk.
Our Eating as Learning infographic shows the skills children need to acquire in order to learn to eat and the impact that feeding difficulties can have on the child and their family.
