Tag Archives: news

Food clubs and their social impact

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Many of you will know that I do a lot of research focusing on Rung 2 of the Food Ladders. One of these organisations is The Bread and Butter Thing. I’ve known Mark and Jane since they founded the Food Club in about 2016. In 2019 we did our first member survey. I was a bit tired of the narrative around saving money. My view is you can’t save what you haven’t got in the first place. I wanted to explore the extent to which some of the benefits I had heard about qualitatively were being experienced (A classic example of the benefits of mixed methods or combining intensive and extensive research see table on page 14).

That first survey was the first one to highlight the social benefits attributed to food clubs and the extent to which members experience them (a report is available here). At the time there were just under 8000 TBBT members located in sites primarily across Greater Manchester. And although you won’t see references to this report in the reports from other food club umbrella organisations, the report was shared with them and makes up key impact measures for the sector.

Since that initial survey, TBBT has done an expanded annual members survey. From fairly humble beginnings of a survey that included about 300 responses to just a few questions, the 2024 survey has about 9.5K responses (from a population of about 80K) to a wide range of questions about people’s circumstances, how they are getting by, and how they percieve the impact of joining TBBT has been for them (Some highlights are here). This remains the only large-scale data source that is collected directly from to food club members. I have been proud to have been able to help with this and provide some analysis of the data. I have never managed to find the time to pull out all the rich insights that are buried within. One day, hopefully.

Mark and Vic recently asked me to join them for a podcast (which turned into two!) to talk about the results of the survey for this year. Vic joined TBBT toward the end of the lockdown period. Prior to that she worked for Manchester Council and when the pandemic hit she coordinated their food response brilliantly. Mark introduced me to Vic and we had many discussions about how best to meet the needs of people in Manchester depending upon their circumstances. I have written about that work in a book chapter about food security resilience under Covid 19 that appears in a book called Living with Pandemics.

The podcast, called a Slice of Bread and Butter, usually involves a conversation with a member and then a bit of discussion. These are fascinating insights into the determination and buoyancy of members in the face of struggle. They demonstrate how precarious life can be and how vulnerable most of us are to finding ourselves in similar situations. I encourage you to follow the podcast. They are available on all the major podcast sites and also on the website linked above.

Here are both episodes where we talk about just a tiny proportion of survey findings and how they reveal just how much food clubs, like TBBT, that are carefully curated, organised and managed can make a difference.

Episode 1: Revolutionising Food Support

Episode 2: Affordable nutrition for thriving communities

*New* Food Ladders Toolkit Launched

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On the 10th of September 2024 we launched the Food Ladders Toolkit. The event was held in Lambeth at the Community Shop. Food, based on the food stories of people who use Community Shop, was cooked for us by community members. It was absolutely fantastic. We want to thank all those who helped with the day and those who came and joined us.

If you were unable to join us for the launch and would like to know more, there will be a webinar on 1 October 2024, this time hosted by Sustainable Food Places. I will be talking about the food ladders and will be joined by Mark from The Bread and Butter Thing, another organisation that uses the Food Ladders to structure their support. The link to the event is here.

So why do we need a toolkit?

People in wealthy and poor countries struggle to have the food they need to live their best lives. The reasons for this are complicated. There is a mix of individual, group, community, and national factors. The food ladders is a framework to help communities, service providers, local government, and others develop an understanding and a pathway toward a food system that meets community members’ needs and desires, both now and in the long term.

We can’t expect communities that are already struggling to be able to do this on their own, but we also cannot do it without them. Building something new is hard work. It takes commitment and motivation. This toolkit aims to support those who can help to be able to do so. This toolkit is primarily aimed at those in local government and local food networks. There will be elements that community organisations may also find helpful. It is not a toolkit for those who are struggling.

The toolkit is based on interviews we conducted with about 30 people working in local governments across England. We wanted to understand how people were using the framework. In particular, we wanted to understand its utility and also where the difficulties might be. We found that organisations and local authorities across the UK use the framework to structure their planning and approach to community development, community resilience, health, and poverty. Local authorities using the framework have shifted to partnership working, with public consultation happening at the start of the process rather than toward the end. We learned about joined-up support networks in these places that cut across a variety of projects and organisations who come at the issues from a multitude of different directions. We saw an understanding of how places are designed, how we engage with people, and how we communicate with each other creates positive change.

But we also found several areas where this process can be complicated. Food work touches on multiple departments within a local authority, and coordinating that is needed. Motivation and momentum can flag. Sometimes, community members meet the effort with scepticism. Sometimes, we lose sight of the vision or forget to clearly define what we are building toward. Sometimes, messages are misunderstood. To help with this, we have created workshops, case studies, videos and diagrams and currated links to the work of others that we feel can help overcome these difficulties.

Enter the Toolkit here

I hope that these tools will be helpful. If you think a tool is missing, please do not hesitate to get in touch with me. Likewise, I would love to hear stories about how the Food Ladders is being used in your area. You can use the form below to do so.

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The Rise of Food Insecurity in England: Using Food Ladders to overcome the barriers

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The full report is available to download here.

I was recently invited to present at a parliamentary breakfast. In fact, it was to be this morning. But a general election was called, so the breakfast was cancelled. I wrote a report to be handed out at the event about the state of Food Security in England and how it has increased alarmingly. 2018 before the pandemic, the rate was about 1 in every 10 adults. In the summer of 2020, the rate increased by 50%. The situation in 2022 was 1 in every 4 adults.

Vulnerabilities have also shifted over time. In 2020, gender was not a predictor of food insecurity. It now is. Women are more vulnerable compared to men. Those who are most vulnerable earn less than £32K (46.4%), those who are not in paid work (44.8%), and those living in the most deprived areas (39.9%). The groups with the largest percentage increase are those that earn less than £32K (20.5% increase), those not in paid work (16.5% increase), and those in the non-white British ethnic group (14.4%). The groups that showed the highest rates of growth, albeit starting from a lower base, are those who earn more than £32k per year and those over 65.

There are things we can do to address this increased barrier for many. We can work locally to help build the capabilities people need to be food secure, which means improving not just the financial resources people clearly need but also the other resources that facilitate food security in the longer term, such as health, well-being, community connections, and local access to good food. This is what the food ladders aim to do.

Other things could be done at a larger scale as well.

  1. Those who fund community interventions can provide adequate funding to enable these interventions, which includes helping to cover the longer-term costs of paying staff a living wage and providing funding that helps to cover running costs. There is a lot behind offering a service that needs to happen, which is not directly part of the service itself.
  2. The food industry can help organisations with food costs. Asking them to pay full price to offer food at a discount or for free is not sustainable for the organisations doing this work.
  3. In-store, offering incentives to purchase healthy food and making these foods less risky for customers is important as well. The Food Foundation has done some research that explores key metrics supermarkets are doing on this front. Some do better than others. The report has some good ideas.
  4. The government can empower local authorities to develop and deliver food strategies. This will require funding. This was a recommendation in the National Food Strategy, and it should be taken up. The government can also consider and support the need for social investment in levelling up strategies.
  5. Ensuring that people have an adequate income with opportunities for advancement and progression is also needed. Being food insecure should not be reserved for the wealthy. To have a workforce that is able to work in the long term requires that they be able to eat a healthy diet. Without this, health suffers ,and the need for support services increases.

Acknowledgements: This research was funded in part by a UKRI HIEF Knowledge Exchange grant.  Special thanks to Isaac Tendler for his work interviewing local authority officials and for the cover artwork.  Thank you also to Nicole Kennard for the interview material with people struggling in 2020. 

The living wage? A view from a discussion.

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What are your thoughts? I have some views, but I am curious about what the hive mind thinks. I recently engaged in a thought-provoking discussion with charity trustees focused on supporting struggling individuals. Our conversation centred around the challenges related to wages and their broader impact.

One trustee highlighted the charity’s struggle to maintain wages in line with the cost of living to ensure employees earned the minimum wage. This led to tough decisions such as cutting back, making redundancies, and reducing certain services to cope with financial constraints, hindering expansion and sustainability efforts. Most funding comes from grants, yet providers often prioritize immediate costs over long-term sustainability in funding decisions.

Another trustee, a company’s managing director, shared concerns about the constraints of the minimum wage. They expressed a preference for employing more individuals at a lower rate to bolster the company’s future prospects.

Both trustees emphasized the importance of not increasing taxes and suggested higher earnings thresholds in the benefits system. They proposed the idea of paying lower wages to employees, with earnings supplemented by the benefits system, aligning their perspectives despite leading different entities—a business and a charity.

These insights shed light on a pressing issue: a significant portion of working adults—25%—struggle to afford sufficient food regularly, leading to food insecurity. Work status no longer guarantees food security, with negative health outcomes stemming from stress, isolation, and poor diet exacerbating the situation. The resulting health challenges further complicate maintaining food security and stable employment, consequently increasing reliance on charitable services.

The dilemma prompts reflection on sustainable solutions that address employee well-being and organizational viability, underscoring the intricate interplay between wages, social support systems, and community welfare. I’ll keep my views to myself for now, but please share your thoughts.