Food Poverty Alliance

Date: 23 February 2016Time: 11am – 2pm

Venue: Oxfam, St Mary’s Street, Cardiff

Chaired by: Hayley Richards, Oxfam

Host venue: Oxfam office in Cardiff

Secretariat: Natalie Rees, WRAP

Attendees:

Maureen Howell – Tackling Poverty, Welsh Government

Kirsty Harrington – Tackling Poverty, Welsh Government

David Morris – Food, Welsh Government

Abigail Tanner – Waste, Welsh Government

Katie Palmer –Food Cardiff, Public Health Wales

Gareth Thomas – WLGA

Hayley Richards – Oxfam

Clodagh Sherrard – Lever Cliff

Rebecca Winslade – Wales NHS

Tony Graham – Trussell Trust

Catherine Williams – Cardiff Foodbank

Natalie Rees – WRAP

Sarah Freeman – Tai Calon

Debbie (Neale) Handley – Rural Regeneration Unit

  1. Welcome and introductions

Hayley Richards – Chair

Apologies:

Amanda Owen (Swansea CBC); Judith John (PHW); Lisa Williams (Cardiff and the Vale)

Sarah Brownwick (WG); Jan Walsh (Co-operative)

ACTION TABLE

ACTION – General
Website / Kirsty to arrange meeting with Rebecca Winslade (PHNetworks Cymru)
to set up virtual alliance on the Public Health Network webpage to set up forum for discussions.
WG to encourage engagement with other partners from across Wales.
Membership / David to contact Sarah Jones from the Welsh Retail Consortium and invite her to the next meeting and arrange for her to become a member.
Kirsty to find out more about possibly inviting someone from the foodmanufacturing board.
Links with TRANSMANGO / Katie/ Judith to summarise the second Transmango workshop from 10th March.
Monitoring Food Poverty / Canadian model introduced and discussion re FPA mini survey or via LA’s.
WRAP to look at findings from past surveys carried out and see how much the research/ survey cost in total.
Katie agreed to add Canadian Survey for discussion to the Food Cardiff agenda. Katie will look at how Canada has conducted the survey and its costs and circulate the questions to the group.
Natalie Rees to ask WRAP if they are able to fund the Food Poverty Alliance mini survey. Natalie will research how much similar mini surveys have cost.
Current all Wales survey is piloting 2 questions from the EU SILC survey on food poverty – can push for this to become included on a permanent basis.
Education / Welsh baccalaureate – food security module does not focus on diet and health – scope for discussion and development, Maureen to discuss with Education colleagues.

Action specific objectives

Objective / Progress / Action
4a to alleviate holiday hunger
To identify areas that will benefit from a holiday hunger intervention / Cardiff - 5 -7 schools have shown interest additional Local Authorities have also shown interest –NPT, Denbighshire, Wrexham and Vale of Glamorgan
Work with partner organisations to set up schemes based on ‘filling the holiday gap’ toolkit and ‘Food Cardiff’ to commence July 2016 / Meeting set up to take programme forward (KP/GT) across Wales / Further work with private sector to be fed back to the group(KP/GT)
KP to contact catering managers to investigate use of school facilities during holiday time.
To monitor and evaluate outcomes / Evaluation support from Decipher / Gareth to feedback at the next meeting.
Funding support / Funding support from WLGA for programme
4b increase uptake of FSM’s
Work with local authorities and schools to maximise the school lunchtime period and manage queuesrestrict children leaving school premises
Encourage sitting and eating socially and taking part in activities
Reduce disadvantage of those children receiving FSM in terms of eligibility for food at break times and lunch times
Review the impact of current systems to increase the uptake of FSM
Share best practice / Draft report sent to LA catering managers with general positive feedback but some drawbacks.
The school health research network has a Cardiff university student reviewing the latest data on uptake of FSM, which include questions on lunchtimes and other factors.
Work ongoing in Cardiff on health impact assessment of school meal lunchtimes.
Identified need to explore other issues that impact on uptake of FSM. / MH to contact Education colleagues to explore funding for free school meals not reaching catering.
Invite education colleagues to next meeting
GT feedback outcome from this
GT to feedback at next meeting
GT to feedback at next meeting
4c free breakfast scheme
Maximise the benefits of the Free BF scheme / Update on evaluation of the scheme (GT)
Current options being looked at before next assembly term. / Welsh Government Education colleagues to feedback at next meeting
Objective / Progress / Action
6a. Work with food producers, manufacturers, retailers and supermarkets to deliver on corporate and social responsibility. / CN from WRAP taking this forward with manufacturers to commit to sign up to Courtauld agreement 2025.
Retailers CSR policies to be shared.
WRAP working on reducing waste with retailers / To be announced 15 March.
Clodagh Sherrard and David Morris to take forward mapping of manufacturers and retailers and what are they currently doing to deliver on corporate and social responsibility.
Sub group on CSR to be set up
WRAP to feedback on meetings with corporate level retailers re waste commitments.
Use of healthy start vouchers at food coops- the use of Healthy Start vouchersincreased from 206 vouchers in 2012/13 to 3188 in 2014/15. This is an increase well in excess of 1000%.
6b.Food shopping trends
Analyse data from surveys in order to target areas of need. / Potential to look at differences in data from convenience stores to larger stores / David Morris to contact Co-op to discuss potential trials to influence behaviours on food shopping trends.
Clodagh to share data on how Wales and UK differ with respect to shopping trends
To share data on frozen foods from Levercliff.
Clodagh and David to contact retailers re shopping trends.
  1. Future meetings and arrangements to be agreed:
  • Chair of the next meeting: Clodagh Sherrard, Levercliff
  • Host of the next meeting: WRAP, Cathedral Road
  • Date and time: 24 May 2016,11am – 2pm
  • Next meeting to be themed on education