Food insecurity: reimagining our response
How do we work together to reduce the need for food banks? What sort of projects build capacity in our communities, to prevent people getting to the point of needing emergency food parcels? As the cost of living crisis continues, and one in four children experience poverty in the North East, can we ‘re-imagine’ our responses to food insecurity?
Over 50 people attended our gathering on Thursday 2nd May to ask these questions. We heard from Andrew Forsey from Feeding Britain to set the scene: challenging us to think about how we can use our collective power to help give freedom to mean that all can live not only free of hunger, but also free of shame and stigma, free of worry, with a household budget that enables them to eat well and thrive in their communities. Professor Greta Defeyter from Northumbria University then gave some fascinating insight into research about co-locating council services in Newcastle food banks (see her fab graphic in the slides), having a person-centred approach to supporting people so that they don’t have to spend all their time and emotional energy telling the same story to multiple agencies.
Lesleyann Watson from Gateshead Foodbank then showed evidence that when people are given more cash, for example through Cost of Living payments, the need for their support goes down. She stressed that the Trussell Trust continue to campaign for an end to the need for food support, and that wrap-around services in food banks make a huge difference: they have gained clients £411,000 through their financial inclusion support, seeing a 23% reduction in the need to return to food banks.
Sam Laing from Citizen's Advice Gateshead then gave an excellent whistle-stop tour of all the support they offer, which is a lot! It was helpful to show that when we're talking about food poverty, we're talking about poverty: there are multiple causes and important solutions unrelated to food.
Wayne Dobson kindly travelled from North Tyneside to tell us about their work at Cedarwood Trust: setting up a professional preparation kitchen to make microwavable, freshly made and nutritious meals from surplus food that they are distributing to food networks in North Tyneside. Wayne also spoke about the journey they’ve been on in developing a food pantry, seeing that by asking for a small fee for their social supermarket, it is accessible and free of stigma for all, and a ‘top up’ for people to buy extra bits of food that they wouldn’t afford in the shops.
Finally, Nikki Dravers, Gateshead Food Partnership coordinator, presented Prof. Megan Blake's "Food Ladders" framework, and asked everyone to colour code their projects one each "rung" of the ladder. A colourful map shows that though there are gaps and concentrations of provision, there is a lot of good already going on and a lot of potential to work together and learn from each other. I hope our recently launched funding opportunity for community food projects will help facilitate action: we're looking to help pilot new, innovative, partnership projects which might help move from the "catching" to the "capacity building" rung on the ladder.
The whole event ended with the most amazing lunch served by the Samosa Sisters: "women empowering women". Thank you so much to them, to Sara and the team at Peace of Mind for hosting us!
