The Cooking Bus (The Good Food Ride) - update on activities

The term-time programme continues to run smoothly and since its launch the bus has visited 21 schools, taught over 2300 children and trained approximately 250 teachers.

2. To date, the bus has visited Birmingham, Sunderland, Nottingham, Manchester, Leeds, Wolverhampton and Blackburn. All of the bus venues are in the target areas of social deprivation identified at the beginning of the project.

3. Dishes that the children have cooked have varied according to age and ability, but the key food hygiene and nutrition messages are always communicated when making all dishes.

4. Lessons and training of teachers are agreed in advance with the Cooking Bus's two teachers to ensure the cooking sessions fit in with the schools' teaching objectives. (Schools have to register for a visit by the bus and explain how they will integrate bus activity into schoolwork.)

5. We are using the school holidays in 2004 to trial a number of different projects and ways of working to see which works best and achieves the best results from the Cooking Bus. We have explored a number of methods of targeting the bus at the areas identified using the Neighbourhood Renewal Funds ‘Indices of Deprivation 2000’. We have taken bids from people across the country; these have been generated by:

• www.food.gov.uk
• including information about the Cooking Bus in Environmental Health Officer updates
• enquiries via Focus on Food
• inclusion within Sustain’s newsletter (see paragraphs 23-25)
• informing 5-A-Day regional co-ordinators via the Agency’s Nutrition Division
• networking and word-of-mouth

All of these were then evaluated to see which were worth exploring further. The projects listed below are the result of this work.

Carnegie International Weightloss Camp – Bradford
6. One project that is of particular interest is the Carnegie International Weightloss Camp (run by Leeds Metropolitan University) based at Woodhouse Grove School, Bradford. This contact was established via Focus on Food.

7. The camp is an annual residential camp for children aged 8–18. This year it will run from 25 July – 4 Sept 2004. It adopts a multidisciplinary approach, involving skill-based, enjoyable physical activity, moderate dietary restriction and behaviour modification.

8. The camp’s lifestyles component covers healthy eating as a key element. They encourage healthy eating for life and, to encourage this key message, the sessions are both practical and fun. The Cooking Bus will reinforce the messages. Discussions to date have covered the children cooking one of their three meals while on the bus to help communicate that they can cook a healthy meal for themselves. A staff training session will also be incorporated so that the work of the bus can be sustained after it has left.

9. While the bus is at the camp over 100 boys and girls who are overweight and obese will attend the sessions.

London Health Commission
10. In addition to this, the Agency is also working in partnership with the London Health Commission for the month of July – to form a month-long ‘London Tour’ that will facilitate local and consumer press visits.

11. The London Health Commission works in partnership with agencies across London to improve health inequalities and improve the health and wellbeing of all Londoners. The LHC recognises that this requires co-ordinated action to improve the determinants of health across London. It promotes this by:

• building partnerships across sectors and organisations
• influencing key stakeholders and policy makers
• providing practical support for local activities

12. The Commission is run by an Executive made up of the Chair (Len Duvall OBE), the Deputy Chair (Melba Wilson) and representatives from its key partner organisations (Regional Public Health Group – London, King’s Fund, Greater London Authority, Association of London Government, Government Office for London and the London Health Observatory).

13. The Commission has recruited two projects for two of the four weeks (school holiday period); one is a council run playscheme in Wandsworth (Wandle Primary School) and the other is in Woolwich (Mulgrave School).

These will be combined with the last two weeks of the summer term when the bus will be in Neasden and Tower Hamlets (schools recruited by Focus on Food).

Kwiksave – St Helens
14. For the first week in August we will be trialling a project with Kwiksave stores. We were approached by Somerfield stores (who own Kwiksave) regarding working together on a project involving the Cooking Bus.

15. Kwiksave stores are based within local communities and tend to be in socially deprived areas – so thereby provide a good way to access the Cooking Bus target areas (and the supermarket carpark also provides an area for the bus to be parked).

16. The Kwiksave trial store is in St Helens, one of our target areas. The store manager is currently working with community groups and schools in the area who will be able to visit the bus while it is at the store.

17. This project may well open up other opportunities for us to target schools that may not otherwise be able to accommodate the bus or allow us to target a community rather than an individual school.

5-A-Day – Leeds
18. In August the bus will also be working with the Leeds 5-A-Day project team. The 5-A-Day project aims to increase people’s consumption of fruit and vegetables. This scheme is providing cookery courses to local community members. The team is also working within primary schools to provide activities to encourage children to eat more fruit, and working with voluntary and community playschemes to reinforce the 5-A-Day message. All their work is based within deprived communities in Leeds. Activities are designed to break down the barriers to obtaining a healthy balanced diet, whether that be access to fresh fruit and vegetables or giving people the knowledge to make an informed choice.

19. The Cooking Bus will provide these communities the opportunity to have a hands-on, practical approach to cooking and it will tie together the work that they are doing with the children during the playscheme.

Sure Start – Great Yarmouth
20. The final visit of the summer will be to a Sure Start project in Great Yarmouth (another target area). This project responded as a result of seeing information about the Cooking Bus on our website.

21. Sure Start is a Government programme that aims to achieve better outcomes for children, parents and communities by:

• increasing the availability of childcare for all children
• improving health, education and emotional development for young children
• supporting parents as parents and in their aspirations towards employment

22. The focus of this particular visit will be on parents rather than the children themselves (as they are too young to use the bus). The bus will be promoting cooking skills and healthy eating to young families who need encouragement.

Sustain
23. As part of this programme we have already completed two projects in conjunction with Sustain.

24. Sustain: The alliance for better food and farming advocates food and agriculture policies and practices that enhance the health and welfare of people and animals, improve the working and living environment, enrich society and culture and promote equity. It represents over 100 national public interest organisations working at international, national, regional and local level.

25. Following a meeting regarding the Cooking Bus, Sustain ran a piece in their newsletter to members that generated several responses; two of which were selected for the programme. The Cooking Bus visited Runcorn during the Easter holiday and was in Stockport recently. While in Stockport the Cooking Bus was visited by two Environmental Health Officers (generated by EHO update) who were both very impressed with the work of the bus.

Moving forward
26. The programme so far has incorporated a range of geographical locations as well as a versatile selection of projects. We have had a huge demand for the Cooking Bus during the holidays and, as a result, we have developed an application form for projects that wish to apply for the Cooking Bus. This will allow us to critically evaluate each application to see whether it matches the objectives we have set ourselves. This will be reviewed on a regular basis to ensure that we are getting an even balance of projects.