Food and Young People

Ruth Allen has been appointed as Children’s and Young Person’s Worker. Her 3 day per week post is funded by: Somerset Specialist Health Promotion Service (through the Five-a-day project) Somerset Food Links, Somerset County Council (through Sustainable Somerset)

The work will target wards that have greater economic and social deprivation in particular but will include other areas, especially rural areas such as West Somerset.
The aim is to increase consumption of fruit and vegetables by young people aged 3—18 years.

Key areas of work are:

* Healthy eating, especially fruit and vegetables
* Growing food
* Healthy tuck shops
* Developing a database of farms etc. which parties of young people could visit

Initial work has involved:

* Assessing the potential in different geographical areas and with different target groups (e.g. playgroups, schools etc).
* Partnerships are being developed to take the work forward – e.g. with Carymoor Environmental Trust. Projects that have been initiated include:
* ‘Crash the Curriculum’programme (with Carymoor Environmental Trust waste team, Somerset Environmental Trust and West Somerset Schools)
* Milford Playgroup, Yeovil, food growing and healthy eating (with Somerset Community Food Projects Network)
* Shepton Mallet Infants school food growing project
* Intergenerational food project (with St Johns School, and Gorehedge residential centre, Frome)
* Somerset College of Arts and Technology sustainable development inter-curricular
project (with all feeder secondary schools)
* Development of funding proposal for work with children who are in danger of exclusion from school
* Priorswood School – healthy eating project, linked to Children’s Parliament

Hard outcomes of the project, e.g. short-term increased consumption of fruit and vegetables, are relatively easy to monitor. Other, ‘softer’ outcomes are less easy to monitor: greater access to the outdoor environment may increase self esteem of vulnerable young people or improve playground behaviour. Social auditing will assist in monitoring these outcomes.