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 …
CFHS updates
Cooking skills blog 9. The new eatwell guide, the REHIS accredited cooking skills course and ‘training for trainers’
Also posted in CFHS Blog, Cooking course resources, News
Areas of Work: Cookery skills, Food and nutrition training, Information provision
Improving food and health for adults with learning disabilities – learning from policy, research, and practice in the community
Meeting notes Twenty-five people from across Scotland (specialist dietitians, learning disability service providers, community and voluntary sector staff) attended this meeting to hear about and discuss food and health activities. The audience heard from: Dr Craig Melville from the Institute of Health and Wellbeing who discussed obesity and the Institute’s weight management programme for people …
Also posted in Events and conferences
Area of Work: Learning disability
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 …
Also posted in CFHS Blog, 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 …
Also posted in CFHS Blog, Finding out if your cooking skills courses are working
Areas of Work: Cookery skills, Information provision
Blog 6 – What does it mean to support ‘vulnerable’ people on your cooking skills course?
Our cooking skills study group are running their cooking skills courses for ‘vulnerable people’ and/or ‘parents (or carers)’ living on a ‘low-income’. As we’ll be gathering collective evaluation information, we had to agree on how we define these categories. Defining ‘vulnerable’ wasn’t easy. It can include many people, from a recently widowed older man to …
Also posted in CFHS Blog, Recruiting and working with vulnerable groups
Areas of Work: Cookery skills, Information provision
Cooking skills blog 5: Does your group eat together at the end of a cooking skills session?
How do you decide what to do with the food that has been cooked? Should participants take the food home (to share with others, or eat later) or is it better to eat a meal together (prepared either together or separately) or a mixture of both of these? Does it matter? Your choice might depend …
Also posted in CFHS Blog, Ideas about developing and running cooking skills courses
Areas of Work: Cookery skills, Information provision
Community cafe networking event, June 2015
What was it? The third Scottish-wide networking event for community café practitioners was held in June 2015. It was planned and run jointly by Community Food and Health (Scotland) or CFHS, Edinburgh Community Food (ECF) and members of Edinburgh Community Café Network (ECCN). The event took place in St Andrew and St George’s Church in …
Also posted in Events and conferences
Area of Work: Community cafes and retailing
Improving food and health for adults with learning disabilities – learning from policy and practice in the community
The meeting will build on the roundtable discussion we had last December (notes from the meeting are available here) and will provide an opportunity to learn from research, policy and practical work and to discuss issues on implementing good practice with speakers and your colleagues. This is a small meeting (up to 30 people) Speakers …
Also posted in Events and conferences, News
Area of Work: Learning disability
Cooking skills blog 4: Do you tailor (or target) your cooking skills courses to suit individual needs?
Our cooking skills study group has already met and agreed a list of outcomes that each of them will evaluate when they run their courses over the next six months. However, all members of the group run their cooking skills courses differently to each other, and they run each of their courses differently. They will …
Also posted in CFHS Blog, Ideas about developing and running cooking skills courses
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 …