Food & Health Alliance

Workshop 5. Community food skills

Kim Newstead, Development Officer for Community Food and Health (Scotland), described how her organisation supported work in the community that improves access to, and take up of, a healthy balanced diet.

Over the last 12 years CFHS has supported a wide range of community food skills activities. It had also supported  food skills tutor training projects,  and community recipe books.

Those who were planning community food skills sessions might seek help from others to deliver these skills, they might use handbooks or they might pay for tutors, said Kim. And some focused on things like fostering independent living skills, budgeting or building confidence rather than simply nutrition.

She highlighted a range of schemes across Scotland to promote tutor skills. These included:

• Edinburgh Cyrenians [embed www.cyrenians.org.uk ]

This organisation delivers cookery sessions to people who are homeless. The sessions are delivered by volunteer tutors and assistants who have to complete a food hygiene certificate as well as receiving one-to-one support and a tutor assistant place on a course.

• University of Dundee with the Food Standards Agency (FSA)

The university and FSA implemented and evaluated a food skills programme in eight low income areas of Scotland between 2000 and 2002. The focus was on improving nutrition. Tutors were drawn from the local communities and given a tutor book, The Cookwell Book to work from. [www.food.gov.uk]

• West Lothian ‘Get Cooking’ programme

West Lothian have been running community cookery courses since 2003. They include courses for the tutors, 45 of whom have so far received training. Skills taught include nutrition, food hygiene, group work, numeracy and literacy. Tutors receive support through a tutor network that provides training materials, a newsletter and support from a tutor trainer. For information is available on their website [www.getcooking.org ]

• NHS Dumfries and Galloway Train to Train cooking course programme

This programme started around two years ago. Potential tutors are mainly recommended from organisations that are able to deliver cookery sessions in their own organisations.

The course includes food hygiene accreditation, nutrition skills and practical cookery sessions. Support is available after the course through a network and network newsletter.

• Enable ( Scotland)

Enable aims to improve the food and nutrition skills of support staff working with people with learning disabilities. Enable managers are encouraged to complete the REHIS elementary food and health course and in-house courses so they can cascade information to their teams. Case study available in ‘Food, training and Learning Disability’ publication www.communityfoodandhealth.org.uk

In the second presentation Fiona Matthew, Catering Advisor with NHS Grampian, described how her team were developing training kitchens to encourage members of the community to adopt a healthier diet by cultivating confidence in their skills.

The workshop then divided into smaller groups to discuss specific issues around tutor skills . Asked to identify the top skills that tutors need to deliver practical food advice, they focused on communication, organisational enthusiasm, engaging people, confidence in their ability, practical food and nutrition knowledge and empathy with and knowledge of the client group.

The groups also suggested a number of ways in which tutors could acquire those skills. These included shadowing, mentoring, evaluation, different methods of training, personal development, signposting and study skills.

Finally, the groups considered the question of how much it might cost. Without coming up with a definitive answer, they highlighted a number of factors that would need to be taken into account. These included training, venue, childcare, funding issues, partnership working, working with established groups and training people in-house to save on project costs.