Our proposal: How are we going to change the system?
The discovery phase of the Shaping Places for Healthier Lives project has culminated in the team producing a plan for how reduce food insecurity across Shropshire. Below are details of our vision, along with the 4 key areas in which we would work to achieve it.
Our vision
In 10 years' time:
Statutory and voluntary services will be working together with communities to ensure everyone in Shropshire has access to the help and support they need to prevent food insecurity. Our population will have sufficient income, access to enough healthy, affordable food and the knowledge and skills needed to prepare it. As a consequence, the population will enjoy good health and wellbeing and inequalities will be reduced.
Changing the system: Creating a learning and feedback structure which brings partners together from across the system
Long term goal
1) Strategic leaders from the statutory and community sectors recognize the importance of addressing food insecurity as a health inequality and adopt whole systems working when thinking about complex problems.
2) Key organizations adopt a whole systems approach to addressing complex problems like food insecurity.
3) Statutory and community sectors work together to co-design asset based sustainable approaches to ensure those who need support are kept at the centre of the system.
How?
-
Develop a three-year learning plan
-
Over the 3 years of this funding test and pilot solutions identified in the three areas below (economic, social and community)
Economic: Enabling individuals to maximise their income
Social: Reframing food insecurity
Community: Build on local assets to develop community led solutions
Long term goal
1) Everyone in Shropshire has access to sufficient income to enable them to afford a healthy diet.
2) People in rural areas are able to access support and services.
3) Proactive early intervention reduces food insecurity in Shropshire.
4) People are supported to navigate the system so they can get help.
5) The system is redesigned to work around the individual to address multiple needs
How?
-
Use whole systems approach to review how services and local support is delivered in rural areas
-
Engage with council departments/council members - could cash first approaches be used?
-
Help for people at risk of food insecurity to maximise their incomes (real living wage, improve job contracts, identify households at risk, Comms around entitlement to benefits)
-
Pilot frontline staff training
-
Explore ways to improve navigation of the system to assist people with multiple areas of need
Long term goal
1) People in Shropshire who are struggling financially feel that there is no stigma in coming forwards for support. They know they will be treated with dignity and respect by their community and the agencies they come into contact with.
2) Health professionals recognise food insecurity as a health issue and they change their practice to provide advice and make referrals
How?
-
Trial communications which change the narrative around food insecurity - reframing the issue/addressing negative myths and perceptions to reduce stigma
-
Trial communications around caring for your community - building on connections developed during covid
-
Trial communications to health professionals around food insecurity & health inequalities.
Long term goal
1) The development of community solutions to food insecurity which improve access to affordable food and increase food skills.
2) Local projects run by the community to support each other without stigma.
3) Help available in the local community for people at risk of food insecurity
How?
-
Hold place-based meetings in each community to allow them to identify where best to intervene - harness local passion and build on local assets
-
Co-produce local community project pilots (projects which either help people to access sufficient good food or build food skills). Ensure that local people with lived experience of food insecurity are supported to engage in this process.
-
Evaluate and learn from projects and give voice to the community through case studies, social media and feedback to statutory organizations about opportunities for making more impact.
The 4 key areas of work
