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Funder and partners

The Food Standards Agency

The Food Standards Agency (FSA) is an independent government department set up by an Act of Parliament in 2000 to protect the public's health and consumer interests in relation to food.

One of the Agency’s aims is to, working with Government and other key stakeholders, encourage all schools to adopt a whole-school approach to food and nutrition.

Building upon the Getting to Grips with Grub core competences for 14-16 year olds the Agency has developed and consulted on a consensus framework of food competences that extends to children and young people aged from 5 to 16+ years. This sets out the essential building blocks in relation to healthy eating, cooking and food safety and covers the four themes of:

  • diet and health
  • consumer awareness
  • cooking (food preparation and handling) skills
  • food safety

What's Cooking? (previously known as Cook-it!) was developed to address these competences, as well as engaging young people and helping to influence the wider community.

FSA believes in the importance of helping young people to develop the knowledge and skills to choose, cook and eat safe healthy food. What's Cooking? enables young people to acquire the knowledge to plan, shop and choose a balanced diet, know where their food comes from and understand food labels, be able to prepare food and cook healthy basic meals and to do this in a safe manner. What's Cooking? is one way in providing young people with the opportunity to learn about food and as it is builds on the food competences it importantly provides young people with a consistent set of food life skills and knowledge. It can also help bring children together, and offers schools the opportunity to complement knowledge being gained through the curriculum.

Food Standards Agency: www.food.gov.uk

  

Government Office East Midlands

The national Healthy Schools programme is based on a simple proposition - education and health have a direct impact on each other. Education plays a key role in promoting better health and emotional health and well-being, and healthier children perform better academically.

Across the East Midlands region the nine local Healthy Schools programmes have been supporting schools to put theory into practice. Each local programme is managed by a local education and health partnership from the local authority and the primary care trust. These are championing change programmes in schools that are making a difference to children's lives and helping to establish healthier learning communities.

The national Healthy Schools programme is jointly sponsored by the Department of Health and the Department for Education and Skills, with a regional and local network.

For further information about the national Healthy Schools programme visit:
www.healthyschools.gov.uk/

Please contact your local Healthy Schools programme: www.lhsp.org

Government Office for the East Midlands (GOEM): www.gos.gov.uk/goem

Public Health (Government Office for the East Midlands): http://www.gos.gov.uk/goem/public-health/?a=42496

Youth Sport Trust 

The Youth Sport Trust is a charitable trust, established in 1994 that believes passionately in using the power of sport to improve the lives of young people. With every school in England now part of a School Sport Partnership and a growing number of Specialist Sports Colleges it delivers an extensive range of innovative programmes through its network of schools, government departments and corporate partners aiming to build a brighter future for young people through sport. In encouraging all children and young people to become more involved in PE, sport and physical activity, the Youth Sport Trust recognises the importance of them being able to make appropriate food choices, see the necessity for a healthy diet, and understand the energy balance.

The Youth Sport Trust is keen to encourage and support schools that want to integrate physical activity within their project to demonstrate how healthy eating and physical activity are integral to an all-round healthy lifestyle and will help deliver on the outcomes of Every Child Matters. Read about how one Sports College successfuly combined their cookery club with a regular fitness session to improve the overall health and well being of the young people involved.

For more infomation and advice on how you may be able to integrate physcial activity as part of your What's Cooking? club please contact: natalie.smith@continyou.org.uk

Further information on the work of the Youth Sport Trust can be found at: www.youthsporttrust.org.

 

EdComs

We are an independent research consultancy with extensive experience in conducting research in the educational market.

The broad aim of the evaluation is to assess the impact of the What's Cooking? clubs among a range of key audiences: participants involved, club co-ordinators, additional school staff, local authorities and participating parents.

The impact of the What's Cooking? clubs will be understood by exploring and measuring: an understanding of the purpose and role of What’s Cooking?, levels of enjoyment and satisfaction, overall outcomes achieved for participants and coordinators, the wider benefits of the scheme, drivers and barriers to setting up and running the clubs, successful strategies to running and sustaining the scheme and a review of the usefulness of the What’s Cooking? guide.

The research will be conducted over the course of the 2008 academic year and involves a number of different data collection methods:

  • Six case study visits to What’s Cooking? clubs
  • Nine telephone interviews with Local Authority representatives (one for each Local authority)
  • Ten teacher reviews of the What’s Cooking? co-ordinators Guide with follow-up telephone interviews
  • To inform What’s Cooking? resource development two stakeholder workshops will be run to discuss the impact of the scheme and to generate ideas for self-evaluation and support materials.

The research will overall result in practical recommendations to inform the development of What's Cooking? clubs for the future. It will also help to show how What's Cooking? meets wider community health aims and policies.

For further information on EdComs, visit their website: www.edcoms.com