Understanding the experiences of parents in low-income families on their children’s healthy eating during the Cost-of-Living Crisis

Objective: To explore parent perspectives of the barriers and facilitators they face regarding their child’s eating behaviours during the United Kingdom’s Cost-of-Living Crisis. Design: Qualitative study of 23 individual interviews. Theoretical Domains Framework (TDF) was used via reflexive thematic analysis to explore the barriers and facilitators that parents in low-income families were facing regarding their children’s eating behaviours during the UK’s Cost-of-Living Crisis. Setting: Conducted online.Participants: 23 participants were recruited. All parents were female (100%), with many being part-time employed (39%), White (48%) with at least 2 children (48%).Results: Perceived barriers to child healthy eating behaviours in low-income families attributed to the TDF domains ‘Environmental Context and Resources’, ‘Social Influences’, ‘Behavioural Regulation’, ‘Beliefs about Capabilities’, and ‘Beliefs about Consequences’. These link to four of the COM-B model elements Physical Opportunity, Social Opportunity, Psychological Capability, and Reflective Motivation. Perceived facilitators of how parents can improve their children’s healthy eating during the Cost-of-Living Crisis were ‘Environmental Context and Resources’, ‘Behavioural Regulation’, ‘Knowledge’, ‘Memory, Attention and Decision-making processes’, and ‘Social Influences’. These link to the three COM-B domain elements Physical Opportunity, Psychological Capability, Social Opportunity.Conclusion: This study took a novel approach adopting the COM-B model and TDF to identify the perspectives of parents in low-income families on the barriers and facilitators of their children’s eating behaviours during the Cost-of-Living Crisis. These findings address the potential changes that families need to improve their children’s healthy eating behaviours.Key Words: Cost-of-Living Crisis, child healthy eating, food insecurity, behaviour change interventions, charity stakeholders