A practical staff reflection toolkit to help early years teams strengthen safer eating across mealtimes, play and the wider nursery day.

Staff Reflection Toolkit: Supporting Safer Eating

This practical Staff Reflection Toolkit supports practitioners and teams to reflect on how safer eating is understood and experienced across the setting, helping children eat safely, confidently and with a sense of belonging.

Designed for use in staff meetings, supervision and quality improvement activity, the toolkit supports teams to reflect on mealtimes through a child’s eyes, supervision and staff deployment, food preparation and textures, allergies and culture, independence, and food play.

The toolkit includes prompts on safer eating beyond mealtimes, including sensory and food-based play and the resources children encounter throughout the nursery day. It also helps teams agree actions and consider their impact on children.

Rather than acting simply as a checklist, the prompts encourage professional dialogue and purposeful reflection. Use it alongside the Marathon Safer Eating Audit & Assurance Tool to support leadership assurance and team improvement.

This resource is particularly useful for:

• Supporting safe, calm and inclusive mealtimes through team discussion.
• Reviewing supervision, staff deployment, age-appropriate food preparation, textures and progression.
• Considering allergies, culture and belonging, including how children experience food and food play.
• Agreeing practical changes and ways to notice the difference children experience.

Clear, focused and practical, the toolkit can be revisited regularly to strengthen safer eating practice, support continuous improvement and keep children’s experiences at the centre.