Food poverty and access

Increasingly community food initiatives across Scotland have been responding to demands for emergency food aid for people experiencing the most severe effects of food poverty. The provision of emergency food parcels through food banks has grown rapidly.

However, balancing the need for short-term emergency food aid with creating sustainable change for people experiencing food poverty is a rising challenge across Scotland. In view of this, the Scottish Government recently held a consultation on Ending the Need for Food Banks. The CFHS/PHS response to this can be found here.

Our plan for 2024/2025

CFHS is currently working with the Scottish Government, community food networks and our colleagues in Public Health Scotland to plan how the community food sector can be supported in the future.

News and updates

Community food stakeholder engagement: findings

Posted: January 21, 2025

Between spring and autumn 2024 we engaged with stakeholders from the community food sector, including the wider voluntary and public sector engaged in community food, ...

What can community food initiatives do to support cash first approaches to food insecurity?

Posted: February 20, 2024

Published online today, this briefing paper will provide clarity on, raise awareness of, and support use of cash first approaches as the primary response to ...

Challenging poverty in Glasgow

Posted: September 22, 2023

Challenging poverty in Glasgow Challenge Poverty Week is coming up. (2 -8 October)2, which aims to challenge the injustice of poverty and show how collective ...

Please share information about your community food cash-first approaches

Posted: August 1, 2023

If you are involved in a community food initiative and you use or are developing cash-first or holistic approaches to help tackle food insecurity, we would ...

Cash-first: Towards Ending the Need for Food Banks in Scotland: plan

Posted: June 6, 2023

A commitment to a 'cash-first' approach to tackling food insecurity is at the heart of a new Scottish Government plan to reduce the need for ...

CFHS webinar: cash-first approaches to food insecurity

Posted: November 30, 2022

Update 30 November 2022 - webinar recording available What can community food initiatives do to prevent food insecurity and promote cash-first responses? In the last few years, ...

Ending the Need for Food Banks consultation

Posted: February 18, 2022

Public Health Scotland has responded to this recent consultation, which closed on 25 January 2022. You can read the response at the link below. PHS Response - ...

Guest Blog post: Make sure your views are heard on ending the need for food banks

Posted: December 12, 2021

In our guest blog post, Brenda Black from Edinburgh Community Food gives us reasons on why we should respond to the Scottish Government consultation paper ...

Guest blog: Katy Gordon discusses the different approaches that two local areas in Scotland took to tackle food access and food insecurity last summer.

Posted: August 15, 2021

In March 2020, like many people, we, as researchers with an interest in food insecurity in the UK, were hugely concerned about the impact of ...

Guest Blog: Cash First approaches to addressing food insecurity: What is the role of health visitors, midwives and family nurses?

Posted: May 20, 2021

In this guest post, Dr Flora Douglas (Reader in Nursing at Robert Gordon University) discusses her recent research: In late 2019 I was commissioned to undertake ...