All members of our cooking skills study group are aiming to use a combination of three different evaluation sources to find out if their courses are ‘working’, by sourcing evaluation materials from 1) the course practitioner (as an ‘observer’), 2) the participant (‘self-reporting’) and 3) and a third source such as a ‘third party’ who …
Author archives: Kim Newstead
Cooking skills blog 29: Finding out if your cooking skills courses are ‘working’: Guest blog: what’s the difference between ‘observation’ and ‘third party’?
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 28: How do cooking course practitioners support people experiencing food insecurity?
Katy Gordon, a PhD student took part in an internship within the CFHS programme late last year. She focused on a project on food insecurity and cooking courses and carried out an online survey and interviewed practitioners from six organisations. Here are the main findings from a report (which will be available in May). Six …
Posted in CFHS Blog, CFHS updates, Recruiting and working with vulnerable groups
Areas of Work: Cookery skills, Food poverty and access, Information provision
Cooking skills blog 27: Cooking skills research: Are you more likely to cook if you have cooking skills?
This blog post looks at a research article which suggests that possessing cooking ‘skills’ is only one of a range of factors associated with whether a person is actually more likely to cook their meals at home. The article explored who is more likely to cook at home and why; and what impact home cooking …
Posted in CFHS Blog, CFHS updates, Cooking skills research
Areas of Work: Cookery skills, Information provision, Research and evaluation
Cooking skills Blog 26: Finding out if your cooking skills courses are ‘working’: Using both questionnaires and observation as methods
This week, my colleague Jacqui and I have been visiting members of our cooking skills study group and discussing what we have been finding out so far from some of their course evaluation materials. All members of the group are aiming to collect more robust evaluation materials from their courses than they might do usually. …
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
Booking open for CFHS community café visits
Booking is now open for CFHS’s latest community café learning visits, on 24 March in Edinburgh. The visits are open to anyone involved in or with a community café. The aim of the visits is to bring together café staff, volunteers, board / committee members or support / development workers to learn about how other …
Posted in CFHS updates, Events and conferences
Area of Work: Community cafes and retailing
Cooking skills blog 25: Finding out if your cooking skills courses are ‘working’: Guest blog by Jacqui McDowell: ‘The confidence conundrum’
This week, my colleague Jacqui McDowell gives her views on the challenges (and possible solutions) to measuring confidence: ‘If I could, I’d ban people from using the word confidence in the context of cooking classes. Extreme – probably, wrong – I’ll let you decide. Confidence is a tricky thing to measure and assess accurately, whether …
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 24: Cooking skills research: cooking, confidence and enjoyment
Last year, Dr Ada Garcia and her colleagues published a narrative review on community cooking courses and their impact on people’s confidence to cook and their eating behaviour. The review wasn’t systematic, so it looks at a relatively small number of studies. However, if you are looking for academic evidence on the impact of community …
Posted in CFHS Blog, CFHS updates, Cooking skills research
Areas of Work: Cookery skills, Information provision
Cooking skills blog 23: Guest blog by Jacqui McDowell – The social value of cooking and eating together
This week, my CFHS colleague Jacqui reflects on the social aspects of cooking and eating. ‘Who will you eat Christmas dinner with this year? Will you or someone else do the cooking? Me, I’ll be at home with my partner and his learning disabled sister. She will be peeling the spuds, carrots and parsnips, while …
Posted in CFHS Blog, CFHS updates, Ideas about developing and running cooking skills courses
Areas of Work: Cookery skills, Information provision
Our capacity building fund will close on Friday 20 January
Community Food and Health (Scotland) has one remaining funding opportunity available for groups and agencies in Scotland that wish to improve access to, and take up of, a healthy, varied and balanced diet. Our capacity building fund (up to £500) is currently open. Please read the guidance notes before you apply The capacity building fund will …
Posted in CFHS updates, News
Cooking skills blog 30: What are the best recipes to use on a cooking skills course? Part 2.
All the practitioners in our cooking skills study group hope that people on their courses will make the recipes they have learned on the course again at home. Most are encouraging course participants to choose the recipes for some, or all of the course sessions, and I have already written a post (see blog 14) …