Blaenau Gwent Food Partnership: Healthy Food For All
Healthy Food for All in Blaenau Gwent: Tackling Food Poverty, Diet-Related Ill-Health, and Access to Affordable Healthy Food
The Blaenau Gwent Food Partnership, led by Coordinator Chris Nottingham, seeks to ensure that all residents of Blaenau Gwent have equitable access to healthy, affordable food and includes collaboration with local authorities, health boards, and third-sector organisations.
“At the core of our mission is to make sure that every resident in Blaenau Gwent has fair access to healthy and affordable food,” says Chris. “Tackling food poverty, diet related ill health and access to affordable food is key to everything we’re doing.”
A Growing Crisis
Blaenau Gwent faces alarming obesity rates, with 70% of adults and 29% of girls starting school either overweight or obese. In response, the partnership is working across the entire food system, with a particular focus on reducing health inequalities and improving access to healthy food.
“What we’re trying to do is build on community initiatives that are happening across the borough to amplify the good work that’s going on in Blaenau Gwent,” explains Chris. “We’re seeing that there’s difficulties accessing food – whether that’s the cost of food, poor transport or just local availability. Accessing unhealthy foods is the easier option, so we’re working really hard in the community to make healthy, sustainable food choices more commonplace and easier for people to access.”
Key initiatives aim to empower residents to make better nutritional choices, creating pathways to healthier lifestyles for people across the borough.
Several local projects are already making a tangible impact in Blaenau Gwent and are working to bridge gaps in food access whist also fostering community engagement.
Llanhilleth Miners’ Institute Food Hub
The Llanhilleth Miners’ Institute offers a diverse range of food-related activities for people of all ages.
“We do a variety of food classes, which can be anything from healthy eating to specialist cuisine. We do youth cookery classes; a slow cooker club; a project that we call cook fresh; an emergency food pantry……it’s quite a lot really!” says Jamie Nethercott, the food hub manager. “We also do mini cooks, youth cookery….we have single mums….we have working families….we do lovely family sessions and we do tend to see a lot of elderly.”
Jamie credits the partnership for playing a pivotal role in the success of these initiatives. “We all have different ideas with how we want to run things and do things, but as they say, two heads are better than one – and creativity and ideas definitely come from within the partnership.”
Sirhowy Hill Woodlands Trust
The work of the Sirhowy Hill Woodland Trust has evolved from woodland management to providing community allotments and cooking sessions for children. The food partnership has been supporting its work, including providing funding to create raised beds.
Susy Arnold from Sirhowy Hills Woodland Trust believes engaging children in cooking and nutrition is vital and runs workshops for schools and families, taking the produce from the allotments and cooking with it in their on-site kitchen.
“I think it all starts with children,” says Susy. “Today, they children have cooked savoury muffins….we’re trying to show them how to use real ingredient, real food, and not too much of it, and without any rubbish in it.
“This work would not exist without the food partnership. Its support is really, really important, because you can’t do this sort of thing on your own, and we’re all volunteers, so the funding is crucial.”
Collaborating with Flying Start: Raising Awareness and Empowering Families
During the last few years, Blaenau Gwent Food Partnership has collaborated with the Flying Start team to raise awareness of the Healthy Start benefit, significantly increasing uptake.
“We identified that Healthy Start with an underused benefit in Blaenau Gwent so we’ve worked with the Flying Start team to raise awareness,” continues Chris. “We’ve done this through surveys, engagement with the with parents, and the food partnership have been able to host training sessions for flying start staff, so we’ve been troubleshooting problems they’ve faced on the ground, and that’s translated into an increase in Flying Start uptake.”
Training and Education: Equipping Practitioners with Nutritional Knowledge
In partnership with the Aneurin Bevan University Health Board, the Blaenau Gwent Food Partnership has provided Nutrition Skills for Life training to Flying Start practitioners, ensuring that families receive the evidence-based information needed to make healthier choices.
Sherelle Jago is the Flying Start Programme Manager for Blaenau Gwent and has been working with the food partnership over the last four years.
“Access to high quality and nutritious food is a real issue for some families….so predominantly, the main focus has been around supporting access to healthy food and to also ensure that our families understand nutritional value of food as well,” says Sherelle.
“We run a number of different activities and events to ensure that families understand what support is available. Nutrition is something that all of our family support workers are really passionate about however, we felt that we needed to have assurances that they were being given the right information,” she adds. “So, as part of our Flying Start work and through additional funding brought in through Chris, we were able to provide Nutrition Skills for Life training to enable all of our practitioners to be suitably trained in order to give the correct messages to families, which, in turn, will hopefully change their eating habits allowing them to make healthier choices. We’re now in a position to move our Flying Start community hubs to healthy eating zones, and we feel confident through our work with the food partnership that we can achieve that.”
Marmot Region: A Strategic Step Towards Reducing Health Inequalities
Gwent is a designated Marmot Region meaning that its Public Service Board is committed to tackling inequity through action on the social determinants of health.
“Becoming the Marmot region has been a really useful step for Blaenau Gwent as it means that food now plays a central role in in key decisions. It means that food now plays a central role for decision makers in the borough, and the most powerful impact of that is giving every child in Blaenau Gwent the best start in life, and key to that is good nutrition. And if we can give children in Blaenau Gwent the best start in life through accessing a better diet, then we’ve got a better chance at having a healthier future and of reducing health inequalities.”
Addressing the Root Causes of Food Insecurity
Access to healthy food is a fundamental issue in Blaenau Gwent, impacting residents’ health and well-being. As Chris notes, “If where people live dictates what food they buy – and in Blaenau Gwent, there’s high access to takeaways or convenience foods that are high in fat, salt and sugar – and the cost of healthy food means that accessing healthy food is a luxury……people are more likely to access foods that are those calorie dense, nutrient poor, foods that are just convenient and much more affordable for people to feed their families of children starting school.”
The Blaenau Gwent Food Partnership showcases the power of collaboration between dedicated individuals, communities, and organisations. By addressing the root causes of food insecurity, expanding access to nutritious food, and equipping residents with the knowledge and tools to make informed food choices, the partnership is fostering a healthier, more equitable food system for Blaenau Gwent.
Chris concludes: “I came into this job passionate about food, ingredients, how to cook, where food comes from – but my work embedded in the community has really, really made me passionate about the power of being part of this social movement – seeing all the good work going on in the ground and being part of that change.”
Watch the video that accompanies this case study below.