One of the topics that I would like to find out more about is: What are the most successful type of recipes for community cooking skills courses? ‘Success’ for members of our cooking skills study group means recipes that are cooked again at home by participants, (and preferably repeatedly). What’s the best way to choose …
Information provision
Cooking skills blog 14. What are the best recipes to use in a cooking skills course?
Posted in CFHS Blog, CFHS updates, Ideas about developing and running cooking skills courses
Areas of Work: Cookery skills, Information provision
Cooking skills blog 13: How can ‘significant others’ help (or hinder) the aims of your cooking skills course?
Our cooking skills study group recently met together and shared ideas about running effective cooking skills courses. One topic they discussed was the role of ‘significant others’ attending courses. That is (for example), family members attending with their child, or support workers attending alongside the person they support. Significant others can help (or hinder) the …
Posted in CFHS Blog, CFHS updates, Ideas about developing and running cooking skills courses
Areas of Work: Cookery skills, Information provision
Cooking skills blog 12: Finding out if your cooking skills courses are ‘working’: as well as asking participants, who else can you get feedback from?
Our cooking skills study group recently met to discuss how they are getting on with the challenges of thoroughly evaluating their cooking skills courses. For many people that run cooking courses (or any other type of courses), it won’t be necessary to carry out the amount of evaluation that we are expecting from members of …
Posted in CFHS Blog, CFHS updates, Finding out if your cooking skills courses are working
Areas of Work: Cookery skills, Information provision, Research and evaluation
Fare Choice Issue 72
June 2016 edition of our regular newsletter, featuring updates from the CFHS team, food and health policy news and practice, and features from the community food and health sector.
Publishers: Community Food and Health (Scotland), NHS Health Scotland
Publication category: Newsletters
Related topics: community cafes, community food activity, cookery sessions, funding, policy
Area of Work: Information provision
Cooking skills blog 11. Recruiting and retaining ‘vulnerable’ course participants
Our guest blog writer this week is CFHS cooking skills study group member Gail Hutchison. Gail (ANutr) has been running community cooking skills courses for Edinburgh Community Food since 2013 and has recently begun to run these for NHS Forth Valley’s Nutrition and Dietetic Health Improvement Team on a part-time basis. In both areas, Gail …
Posted in CFHS Blog, CFHS updates, Recruiting and working with vulnerable groups
Areas of Work: Cookery skills, Information provision
Cooking skills blog 10: Finding out if your cooking skills courses are ‘working’: How can you improve your questionnaires?
Questionnaires are a popular way of evaluating cooking skills courses. If they are planned well, they are a quick and easy to use and can be used for two different purposes, i.e. to find out: What difference your course has made to participants (e.g. has it improved their cooking skills or eating habits?) or/and; What …
Posted in CFHS Blog, CFHS updates, Finding out if your cooking skills courses are working
Areas of Work: Cookery skills, Information provision, Research and evaluation
Cooking skills blog 9. The new eatwell guide, the REHIS accredited cooking skills course and ‘training for trainers’
Last week I attended the Royal Environmental Health Institute of Scotland (REHIS) event for those that teach the accredited Elementary Cooking skills course and other REHIS food and health courses. For those that are not aware of the REHIS Elementary Cooking skills course – it is short (six-hours minimum); it is suitable for people with …
Posted in CFHS Blog, CFHS updates, Cooking course resources
Areas of Work: Cookery skills, Food and nutrition training, Information provision
Cooking skills blog 8 – How do you find out if your cooking skills courses are ‘working’?
In the last blog, I talked about focusing on what it is you want your cooking courses to achieve. Once you have done that, you need to think about how to find out if your course has (or hasn’t) achieved this. For many groups, it will be enough to have an informal discussion with participants …
Posted in CFHS Blog, CFHS updates, Finding out if your cooking skills courses are working
Areas of Work: Cookery skills, Information provision, Research and evaluation
Cooking skills blog 7 – What difference do you hope your cooking skills courses will make?
The answer may depend on what the people (participants) attending your course want to get out of it and what you (and your funders) hope it will achieve. The amount of time you have, and participant to practitioner ratio may also have an effect on what outcomes you might be able to achieve. Spending a …
Posted in CFHS Blog, CFHS updates, Finding out if your cooking skills courses are working
Areas of Work: Cookery skills, Information provision
Cooking Skills Blog 15 – Researcher guest blog: developing sustainable cooking courses in partnership with people using a mental health support centre
In this guest blog, Michelle Estradé, research consultant at the Scottish Collaboration for Public Health Research and Policy (SCPHRP) explores how the idea of ‘ownership’ might help develop cooking courses within a mental health support centre that can be sustained in the longer term. ‘Over at SCPHRP we love partnering with community-based organisations to learn …