Hi, I’m Lynette Wilson and I am a PEYO at Rannoch ELC Centre. Recently I applied and was successful in being awarded £2164.79 through the Education Scotland ‘Food for Thought’ Fund. You may not have heard about the fund before but it has been running for over 9 years! This year there were only 300 applications with just around 80 being approved!
The Food for Thought Education Fund gives financial support to develop Food and Health as a context for learning. The fund aims to improve practitioner confidence in providing progressive, high quality, skills based learning experiences which help to embed food education into the ethos of the establishment. It also provides an opportunity to plan and implement learning experiences which build sustainability and capacity for future development.
You can find the link to more information here….Food for Thought Education Fund 2022 – 2023 | What we do | Education Scotland
The Fund allows Local Authority Primary and Secondary Schools and Early Learning and Childcare settings to apply for grants of up to £3,000 to develop projects that support the aims of the Fund. (Note – ASN establishments in the independent sector are also eligible to apply).
ELCCs that are part of/attached to a primary school must be counted as one establishment.
There is detailed criteria which must be evidenced on your application but to help you understand all of the requirements the website does have guidance notes to support you to fill in your application.
What have we done with our grant?
Cook to Connect
Our project is called ‘Cook to Connect.’ Our Project supported our families to connect with each other through working together on food experiences. We have worked collaboratively with local businesses and other agencies to develop knowledge of home grown, economical, environmentally friendly meal options and snacks together. We are developing our understanding as a group ways of making healthy food choices and reducing food waste. The project continues to work towards the goals in the guidance from ‘Love Food, Hate Waste’ to help us drive forward, the global need to eliminate food waste by turning unused food into meals rather than going in the bin. With our partnership with Fare Share we have also been turning our food bank donations into healthy meals ideas or snack suggestions where possible.
We established a leadership group within the centre who have responsibility for planning and implementing a series of family workshops with the aim of sourcing local produce and learning together how to make healthy meals as a family unit. Microsoft forms were sent out inviting all families to sign up to register an interest in our first session. The participant session numbers were kept quite low so that we could ensure high quality interactions and engagements could take place and to develop the confidence of our parents, who for a long time, due to Covid-19 and other factors had perhaps not had as many opportunities for social engagement.
We have offered 5 family “Cook to Connect” sessions. Sign up’s were very popular which resulted in the centre offering additional sessions. Our sessions involved parents attending with their children and learning how to prepare food together. We made soup, cakes and meal options. Our families were then giving the food items home to make again with their child. Some parents sent in photos or had discussions about how much they enjoyed doing this with their child.
During November we displayed advice from Child smile and from our Speech and language therapy team on advice around supporting eating and drinking at our ‘communication afternoon’. During our December open evening we linked up with Forth Valley College to provide information and advice on training courses and further learning and careers in the food and drink industry.
Family Breakfast
After discussions with our families, in addition to Cook to Connect, we also introduced family breakfast sessions. Successful implementation of our project relies on our ability to support food experiences with children and families. We are continuing to develop a sophisticated understanding of the relationship between food and the impact on children’s physical health and mental wellbeing.
We used the Larder budget to buy food items and our fund money to source equipment that would enable our sessions to take place. We piloted it with one playroom, and as it was so successful, we have implemented this in all playrooms. We found that families who came along with their children to prepare and enjoy a healthy breakfast started their day off happier and ready to learn. The ’Better Eating/Better living document highlights, that children, who eat better are well placed for learning.
Sustainability
This project has strengthened the centres ability to provide family learning and engagement sessions, specifically around making healthy food choices, reducing food waste and sustainability and practitioner’s confidence in offering further sessions. This has been transferred into practice through the development of larder options and the experiences offered. By purchasing ‘Cook to Connect’ kits for each playroom it breaks down barriers of having to share resources and allows us the opportunity to further offer sessions in all play rooms.
Establishing a ‘Grow a soup bowl’ facility within the grounds of the ELC Centre is our next step. We plan to develop an area that we can plant all the ingredients in that we need to make a variety of home-made soups. This will enable us to use the food within the centre and hopefully if our crop is successful, share with our families to use at home also.
Here is a link to our “Thing Link” with some information and more photographs about our project.
https://www.thinglink.com/scene/1671627495222280193
Keep an eye out on Twitter, Education Scotland website and your email’s for future application windows.
Feel free to contact me on lynette.wilson@falkirk.gov.uk or 01324 508700 to chat about the application process or our project further!
