Introduction

We are pleased to present details of the activities undertaken by the Foundation during the last year. The Foundation is the leading independent national charity caring for children who do not grow enough or grow too much. We hope that you will find that the Foundation's aims have been followed with vigour.

Tam Fry

Honorary Chairman

Honorary Chairman's review of significant developments and achievements

As I write this Report I am preparing to do battle on a BBC breakfast radio programme with a Minister for Health. Ten years ago I could not have contemplated such an opportunity and so I regard the interview as a marker of the strides that the Foundation has made over the years. This is not just borne of the fact that we have expanded our remit to champion childhood obesity but also increased our influence. Mind you, by the time you read this Introduction, the Minister may have had me for breakfast but only, I hope, after I have expressed the Foundation's concern that HMG has reneged on its commitment to address obesity. Already it has admitted to the House of Commons' Public Affairs Committee that it is "off course" in its target to halt the year-on-year rise of obesity in children under-11yrs by 2010 and there is a fear that the admission signals obesity disappearing from the political radar. The premise is that the Government will not want to admit defeat on such an important issue in an Election Year so it would be better to "bury" it now. The Foundation will not allow it to be buried and. thus, my conversation with the Minister.

I assume that you are reading these Accounts mainly to verify that the Foundation is in healthy shape and acting properly as a Charity, and so I will summarise our income first. I am very pleased to report that even the most cursory glance through the following pages will demonstrate to you not only that we are solvent but also well managed.

Our growth equipment revenue, derived through marketing growth ~~assessment materials via Harlow Printing of South Shields, continues to rise satisfactorily. During the year we were able to persuade lnvicta Plastics to re-model our most important product, the Leicester Height Measure, a device which has fast become the preferred measuring instrument in UK primary health care circles. Though we have not initiated any work on expanding our portfolio of equipment I can report that two new items will be engineered in the coming year following research that has been in hand since January. One is a measuring instrument for premature infants cared for in incubators and the second is a set of callipers for measuring leg and arm length in disabled children. Precise growth assessment ~is vital for impaired children who cannot sit on or stand straight against traditional measuring devices. Callipers will do the trick,

Our second trading income stream flows from the training courses that were officially recognised in May and listed in the Department of Health's Directory for Obesity Training In Primary Care. I trust that it is not just because we are top at the list of agencies focusing on children but that it is the quality of the courses that draws the crowds. Over the last twelve months they have covered the county from Inverness to Truro and a day is now booked to train military health personnel as far away as Herford, Germany!

Our other main source of income comes from royalties from growth charts. I am confident that we can maintain reasonable royalties in the coming years, despite the fact that the UK may adopt the recently published World Health Organisation charts sometime in 2007. Indeed, I would go so far as to say that the Foundation welcomes the WHO standards because, for the first time, charts will show how babies should grow and, by being breastfed, may be less inclined to become overweight/obese later in their childhood. If the Department of Health doesn't adopt the WHO data, yet simultaneously acknowledges that breastfeeding charts could help to prevent obesity, the Foundation will demand that our Breast from Birth charts based on UK data fills the vacuum.

Routine Growth Assessment for Children

I am hopeful that, shortly, growth assessment will finally become a routine duty for all primary health care workers. As you may have guessed, this has little to do with "growth" per se but a lot to do with "obesity". The outcome, however, remains the same. The heights and weights taken to establish BMI [Body Mass Index] will simultaneously serve to identify every child with a traditional growth-related condition.

My optimism is based on the arrival in a senior post at the Department of Health by a Paediatrician who sincerely believes that growth is, indeed, the best indicator of a child's well being. Such a breath of fresh air has not been witnessed in the corridors of power for some years. Getting her to implement the routine will not be plain sailing unless we can get teachers in schools and nursery schools involved in what has traditionally been seen as a "medical" issue. A recent experiment conducted in Birmingham, however, has shown what might be possible. Teaching Assistants there have shown interest in taking on the measurements required to record the BMI of every Reception Yr and Yr 6 child in the country. The Assistants see the exercise as a valid "education" experience as well as a "medical" exercise since all children need to acquire numeracy skills. What better way, their argument runs, than to have the children measure each other, learn about figures and co-incidentally about the dynamics of their growth. That must make sense and, at a stroke, overcome the chronic shortage of school nurses.

Membership

Whilst the majority of the Foundation's work is conducted from its London base, its membership services continue to thrive from Birmingham. The principal activity here has been to develop a Foundation website which, over time, will not only become our flagship to the world but also provide our membership with the service they need. It is worth noting that that telephoned enquiries to the Foundation have decreased as dramatically as we have posted growth information on the web. I am not at all surprised that parents who used to flock to Foundation Conventions for their main source of information no longer feel the need to attend them.

Media

I have already referred to just one of the many media interviews that have been requested this year. We have not quite equalled our "record" of five radio and TV interviews on a single day made 18 months ago but barely a week goes by without the Foundations' work being featured either on the broadcast media or by the written press. Long may it continue.

Research

In conclusion, I am happy to confirm that research continues to play an important part of our work and can announce that the biggest research project that the Foundation has ever been involved with is about to get under way. It win run for three years at a cost of £300,000. It will investigate the role of growth hormone on higher functioning in children and be carried out at London's Institute of Child Health. It is proven beyond doubt that growth hormone treatment will make a child grow but very little is known about the learning and behavioural disorders in children with growth hormone deficiency. The study has very important implications.

A second study prompted though not paid for by the Foundation, could have even more importance in the long-term. Recently completed, the research provides a fitting legacy to the Foundation's 4yr membership of the NHS' Health Technology Assessment Panel. lt confirms not only that growth monitoring is effective - but also that it is cost-effective. This latter outcome puts to rest any argument by policy makers that routine monitoring is too expensive to sustain, It means that the UK can no longer afford not to reappraise a monitoring protocol that has been in decline for the last 20yrs. It will not go unnoticed that to-day's obesity epidemic has been gathering force for a similar period of time. You could be forgiven for drawing the conclusion that our obesity epidemic might be somewhat self inflicted! Because we failed to weigh our children routinely in infancy we railed to notice the insidious yearly rise in their BMI until, shockingly, it stared us in the face.