Food Matters Strategy

1. Introduction

The Ealing Food Matters Strategy is a pioneering approach based on working together with partners in the council, the Primary Care Trust and the Community and Voluntary sectors to raise awareness of four interconnecting themes that involve food. This symbiotic relationship is geared to enable people, in all walks of life, to make responsible and informed choices and give them the independence to influence their own, and their family’s future, whilst limiting the damage to the environment.

The food strategy gives a clear framework and focus for dealing with food related matters. An integrated approach is used in the case study which it is hoped will have a greater influence on people’s food choices. In line with the Government’s Modernisation Agenda heavy emphasis is placed on the benefits of partnership working.

Food matters in Ealing because it has a large and diverse population with a wide range of health problems related to food. The Ealing, Hammersmith and Hounslow (EHH) Public Health Report (2001), indicates that the rate of chronic diseases such as coronary heart disease (CHD) are falling less rapidly than the national rate. There are also high rates of CHD and diabetes within particular ethnic groups, for example, in southern Asian communities, a higher than average number of children with active tooth decay, and a consistent number of food borne diseases.

2. Objectives and Purpose of Project

Ealing Council has a Community Plan that pledges to improve the quality of life of the people of Ealing. Ealing Primary Care Trust has a Local Delivery Plan that aims to improve the health of the people of Ealing.

During the initial stages of the project, a vision was developed through a range of food policy meetings with local stakeholders, a literature search, and a multi-agency conference. This vision is:

Ealing is the place that improves the health, welfare and prospects of its residents, workers, visitors, and future generations, through improved access to food, better nutrition, safe food, and sustainability throughout the food chain.

Objectives

In order to realise this vision, implementation has been divided into eight strategic objectives based on four interrelated themes namely:

Food Security:

To optimise opportunities for education and employment, increase income, and improve living conditions so that each part of community is empowered to make their own healthier lifestyle choices.
To improve physical and economic access to food that will contribute to health and quality of life.

Food Nutrition and Health:

To achieve long-term improvements in diet and nutrition.
To reduce the risk of coronary heart disease, diabetes, cancers, stroke, obesity and dental caries in the community.

Food Safety:

To ensure safety, composition and information about foods produced, imported, sold and consumed.
To reduce the incidence of food poisoning.

Food Sustainability:

To encourage and promote both a sustainable food supply and food industry.
To encourage and promote local sourcing and fair trade that minimises adverse environmental impact and addresses consumer concerns.

3. Participants

The following partners contributed to the development and implementation of the food strategy:

- Environmental Health
- Sustainability
- Waste & recycling services
- Planning Policy
- Education and Healthy schools
- Neighbourhood Renewal (Healthy Living Initiatives)
- Local Surestart coordinator
- Social Services
- Housing
- Parks and countryside services/events
- Health promotion
- Cardiac Care network
- Diabetes
- Mental health groups
- Community dieticians
- Voluntary groups working with vulnerable target groups
- Local business
- Procurement leads in PCT, Mental Health.

The main partners have been the Primary Care Trust especially health promotion and dieticians, local community and voluntary services, local authority departments-planning, sustainability, healthy schools, school meals co-ordinator, environmental health.

4. Methodology

To enable the objectives to be achieved current activity has been collated, key issues and recommendations identified, and an action plan drawn up to work towards achieving these objectives over the next three years, 2003-2006.

The initial steps and planning needed to take the food strategy forward are:-

- Developing a multi-agency partnership
- Review of existing situation
- Literature review
- Range of consultation-conference, surveys
- Flexible/adaptable to new input
- Mapping of gaps
- Involvement of all partners in finding ways forward
- Publicity

Over t18 months there were approximately 12 meetings involving 5-8 people for 2 hours per meeting. Members have then carried out work in their area and 1 person spent 9 months full time co-ordinating the strategies development. Development has been reported up to the Health Improvement Group (then to Health & Well-being Board and Local Strategic Partnership).

The project has also gone through the cabinet process of the LA and through to the Professional Executive Committee of the PCT.

5. Resources

The project was undertaken as mainstream work with all partners contributing time, resources, money and people as necessary. Some work is being done within other neighbourhood renewal projects, some is being developed as mainstream service delivery.

Members of the partnership have contributed monies and resources to help get a general information leaflet produced, to hold a Food Matters conference and publishing the data, others have given by their contribution to its development.

In addition See references & bibliography in the download associated with this case study.

6. Obstacles

Some of the projects identified during the strategy’s development have not been able to go forward due to lack of funding.

7. Lessons Learned

The original brief was to develop a food policy to address nutritional inequality. This has been achieved. However, by having a multi-agency group involved in the development of the strategy it has enabled it to be more sustainable, more adaptable and more inclusive. The project has raised awareness amongst all partners of the complexity of the food network and fostered the ability for others to work together.

The were benefits on all levels including:

Effective partnership working
Best Value
Improving service delivery
Improving health in population
Tackling health inequalities
Health promotion to reduce chronic conditions
Focuses on sustainability in a practical way
Helping to address increasing obesity a UK wide problem
Focuses on social inclusion and responding to the needs of a diverse community
Fits with the broadening Public Health agenda outlined in Environmental Health 2012
Originally identified in the Health Improvement and Modernisation Plan (mainly led by PCT) then expanded with the publishing of the Curry Commission Report on the Future of Farming & Food, and Lang’s ‘Why Health is the Key to the Future of Food and Farming.
Also linked to the parallel development of partnerships to strengthen service delivery between the LA and PCT (especially how Environmental Health contributes to Public Health-EH 2012).

8. Future Developments

The strategy has already been integrated into the New Opportunity Fund project.

The principles and ethos of the strategy are broad enough to last indefinitely although the local profiling is constantly changing. The structure of this strategy is intended to allow capture of this information, as it will be monitoring the action plan from now till 2006.

Some projects last for 2 years, some of them are examining mainstream services, which will be considering new ways of working in partnerships to improve/broaden service delivery.

July 2004 Update Summary:

Ealing’s Food Matters Strategy was published in November 2003. This brief summary outlines the major achievements of the first year. These achievements have been made possible through the leadership and commitment of all agencies and participants, alongside the many changes in both the Primary Care Trust and the council at this time.

All work has been to support the vision:
‘To improve the health, welfare and prospects of its residents, workers, businesses, visitors, and future generations, through improved food security and access, better nutrition, safe foods, and sustainability
throughout the food chain.’

There are 4 themes, food security, food nutrition and health, food safety and food sustainability. For more information about these themes please see:
http://www.ealing.gov.uk

For each of the themes 2 objectives were set. However, many of the activities address more than one of the objectives. For the sake of simplicity they have been kept in the same order.

For food security:

10 out of 15 projects and 3 new projects have been taken forward under the objective to optimise opportunities for education and employment, increase income, and improve living conditions so that each part of our community is empowered to make their own healthier lifestyle choices

These include the work of the 5-a-day programme, consultation and adoption of the Unitary Development Plan (UDP) and the Supplementary Planning Guidance (SPG) for the borough, raising awareness of food issues at numerous events, encouraging local food growing and introduction of the schools catering consortium.

The three new projects were securing an evaluation of the nutrition and physical activity programme in primary schools in Ealing, use of the Ealing volunteers bureau to help produce this report and Healthy eating presentations given to NW London Tamil groups.

23 out of 30 activities were identified for the second objective to improve physical and economic access to food which will contribute to health, and quality of life.

Highlights from these include the development of the Ealing Foodlinks Directory, and the developments of the projects in that directory, getting commitment to short term and longer term improvements to healthier options in some of the leisure centres, the cooking your way to health and Grab 5 projects, the work done by Groundwork’s community gardener, getting Ealing Hospital onto the pilot London Food Link Hospital Project, working with the London Development Agency on developing a food strategy for London, adoption of UDP especially safeguarding allotments and SPG on ‘greening your home’, enabling future monitoring of the availability of food in local shopping centres and cornershops, community dieticians working with Surestart on improving nutrition, uptake of folic acid in pregnancy, and promoting breastfeeding, the sustainable progress of the schools catering consortium

For Food, Nutrition and Health:

8 out of 10 activities for the third objective to achieve long term improvements in diet and nutrition, most notably, setting up and maintaining informal networks, acceptance of the Food Matters Strategy by the Local Strategic Partnership and contributing to the development of the London Food Strategy. More close to home, the changes in the school catering consortium service are designed for long-term sustainable improvement, and the Department of Nutrition and Dietetics are re-structuring to enable more health promotion work.

4 out of 4 activities were identified for the fourth objective to reduce the risk of coronary heart disease (CHD), diabetes, cancers, stroke, obesity and dental caries in the community. These include work being done by community health educators, a GP scheme giving nutritional information as well as exercise and developing an action plan for the obesity prevention policy. In addition, two new projects include diabetes training for professional staff and childhood obesity training.

For Food Safety:

All 7 activities identified for the fifth objective to ensure safety, composition and information about foods produced, imported, sold and consumed were actioned, including some innovative projects working with Abi Associates Ltd to get local businesses engaged on their role in healthy eating, having a local Polish retailer publish food safety advice for his customers, getting the food hygiene message disseminated with the healthy eating initiatives and a project working with Somali businesses, building trust and raising awareness within the community.

2out of 5 activities were actioned for the sixth objective to reduce the incidence of food poisoning. However, the Environmental Health team experienced an unprecedented number of food hazard warnings (72) in this time, involving a lot of work as Ealing has a large number of food businesses. In spite of a reduction in staff the team has continued to give labelling advice to food businesses on request, contribute to composition and microbiological sampling of foods, including salt, sugar and fat content in foods marketed to children, run 2 courses on food hygiene in Somali and 2 in Punjabi and Hindi, as well as train 180 people in English in conjunction with Thames Valley University, carry out over 500 food hygiene inspections in 9 months and respond to over 2,500 requests for service including misleading or false claims, investigating allegations of food poisoning, complaints about food, labelling, description.

5 out of 6 activities were actioned for the seventh objective to encourage and promote a sustainable food supply and food industry. These include the projects mentioned above and new contact made with the council’s procurements officer. A special mention of the Somali business project, as it included a business seminar with representatives from banks that were able to provide services sensitive to the needs of the Moslem community.

For Food Sustainability:

9 out of 10 activities were actioned for the eighth objective to encourage and promote local food sourcing and fair trade that minimises adverse environmental impact and addresses consumer concerns. These include the projects mentioned above and also progress made by the Fairtrade group.

There are 34 ongoing projects and services listed in Appendix 2 that have continued through this time. Some of their work has been highlighted above.

In conclusion, by working together the council, the Primary Care Trust, the Ealing Community and Voluntary Services, other agencies and individuals working in various communities have enhanced service delivery whilst using their finite resources in an innovative way.

We have started to have:

- Co-ordination of food work to enable all strategic objectives of the Food Matters Strategy to be considered, and to ensure substantiated needs are addressed with the available resources, or through partnership working.

- Enable local communities to be involved with all food matters, including developments outside the borough that may have an influence on the local food networks.

- Enable and ensure food matters are considered when developing corporate, departmental, service strategies and policies, and projects.

- Awareness about food matters should be raised and appropriate systems should be put in place for concerns to be captured and actioned by the relevant partners.

- Business sector, voluntary sector and the community should be encouraged to be involved in all food matters.

- Ensure balanced reporting and information sharing of food matters through appropriate communication systems.

- Research and pilot innovations to overcome the impact of existing restrictions.

And we still have another year to go…..

9. Special Circumstances

Ealing is an outer London Borough with high numbers of food industry activity in the region due to the proximity to Heathrow.

It is geographically large; the PCT population is 3 times larger than the national average.

41% ethnically diverse population.

It has 4 wards that are in the top 15% most deprived (as well as 2 wards that are in the top 25% least deprived).

10. Contacts

Contact: Evelyn Gloyn
Job Title: Health development Co-ordinator
Address:
Environmental Health & Trading Standards
4th Floor Percival House
Ealing
W5 2HL
Tel: 0208 825 8021

Email: Evelyn.Gloyn@ealing.gov.uk

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