Chef Clara stole our hearts at last week’s Kids in the Kitchen cooking class held at the Type 1 Diabetes Family Centre, supported by MinRes.
The popular cooking classes are run during school holidays to help children living with type 1 diabetes learn about the carbohydrates in food that impact their blood glucose levels.
It was the first Kids in the Kitchen experience for the Family Centre’s youngest chef, three-and-a-half-year-old Clara (pictured below). One year ago, her mum Sarah was six weeks pregnant with baby Arthur when Clara was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes.
“We do lots of cooking at home, so Clara was so excited when I told her she had the opportunity to go to a cooking day in the Family Centre kitchen to learn how to make yummy healthy dishes and meet new friends with type 1,” Sarah said.
“She is a little young to fully understand her condition. When Arthur was born, she wanted to know why he didn’t have to wear an insulin pump.”
“It’s a big deal for Clara to be around other kids with type 1 and to see them wear a continuous glucose monitor like hers.”
According to Family Centre Chief Executive Benjamin Jardine, the Type 1 Diabetes Family Centre is the only service of its kind in the world.
“Today, only around one in ten people living with type 1 are meeting their blood glucose targets, which means nine in ten are putting themselves at serious risk,” he said.
“When people come to our centre, we can make a real difference by building confidence and capability to manage this complex disease, enabling them to live a full life without limits.”
“Living with type 1 diabetes means knowing how many grams of carbohydrates are in every meal and snack, to calculate insulin doses.”
“These cooking classes not only teach kids with type 1 that food is not the enemy, but enable them to make friends with others living with the condition.
This helps normalise and break down the isolation that living with a chronic medical condition can impose.”
MinRes is proud to support the Type 1 Diabetes Family Centre as part of our five-year, $10 million partnership with Telethon.
Our support has enabled the Type 1 Diabetes Family Centre to run programs like Kids in the Kitchen to help Western Australians impacted by the condition live life to the max and be part of a supportive community.
In an exciting first, support from MinRes has also enabled the Type 1 Diabetes Family Centre to offer an in-house specialist psychology service.
It is now WA’s only full-time, dedicated psychology service for people impacted by the condition.
For more information, visit type1familycentre.org.au
