Food and Fun
Food and Fun is an award-winning multi-agency school-based education programme. It provides healthy and good quality breakfasts and lunches, food and nutrition education sessions, structured physical activity and enrichment activities to children living in areas of need in Wales. Developed and piloted in Cardiff in 2015, Food and Fun is now being rolled out in schools across Wales overseen by the WLGA with Food Sense Wales a key steering group member.
In 2016 the WLGA worked with Food Cardiff to pilot the Food and Fun model nationally in 10 schools, working with 5 local authorities and 3 local health boards. Cardiff University provided the evaluation and recommended ‘Further scaling up of the model to understand the educational and health benefits to children and their families in different contexts.’ The Welsh Government part funded the programme in 2017 to 38 Food and Fun clubs in 12 local authorities and all 7 local health boards. Continued Welsh Government funding has enabled the programme to grow to 77 schemes in 21 local authorities offering nearly 4,000 places to pupils in 2019.
This year, the Welsh Government provided £4.85million in funding to the programme, which will provide places for nearly 8,000 children as they continue to enjoy time at school during the holidays. The Welsh Government also noted in its 2021 – 2026 Programme for Government that it would continue to build on the Food and Fun scheme.
Food Sense Wales is an advisory board member and continues to support the development of the programme nationally including the development of a Quality Assurance Framework.