Strategic Intent - Feeding Gloucestershire

Our Strategic Intent

Vision
For Gloucestershire to be a county where everyone can enjoy good sustainable food, and nobody goes hungry.

Mission
Feeding Gloucestershire will drive systemic change to build food security across all communities in Gloucestershire.

Strategic Aims

To find sustainable solutions to helping people who are struggling with low incomes or debt to access good food that they can afford
To champion systemic change to build food security, creating local, equitable and sustainable healthy food provision.
To reduce food waste
To facilitate equitable access to emergency food provision
To build community resilience and promote social inclusion, cohesion, and connection through food.
To help tackle the root causes of food poverty

Our Objectives

Short-term

Having supported the Gloucestershire Food and Farming Partnerships successful application for Gloucestershire to become a Sustainable Food County, FG will work alongside GFFP, to support Gloucestershire in its aspirations to attain the bronze award.
To bring together and support the development of a network of organisations, across community, public and private sectors, who are committed to promoting good practice through sharing learning, knowledge, skills, and resources.
To provide a network map and directory to ensure organisations can connect and enable an awareness of the scope of the work happening across the county.
To ensure Feeding Gloucestershire has the capacity to undertake its goals through employing a Network Coordinator and a Project Manager to ensure strategic oversight of FG’s ambition and legacy, this will include developing the network and delivering strategic projects and aspirations.
To signpost to debt, money, and welfare support, (this information will be available on the network map)
- To work with IFAN to produce Cash First leaflets for the remaining four districts in our county.
- To work with organisations offering food vouchers through local authority programmes to improve engagement and uptake.
- To support steps to increase the uptake of Healthy Start vouchers and free school meals
Improve food crisis support through convening and collaborating with existing organisations, local authorities and GCC
To work with community and statutory organisations, and local businesses, to ensure that individuals and families affected by food insecurity know how to access good food and wider support.
To support the development and uptake of provision which helps people move on from food crisis
To engage with and listen to local communities to develop an understanding of local needs, assets, provision, gaps, and opportunities
To define the relationship between GFFP and FG to capitalise on opportunities for collaborative working relationship
To develop and implement an action plan to support and contribute to delivering the community strand of the Gloucestershire Food Strategy
To explore options for continued funding for FG as we are currently only funded until March 2024
Lobbying at local and national government levels to highlight the plight of those who are experiencing food poverty, including those who do not meet the criteria to receive state support

Medium-term

To create an ‘Integrated Local Delivery Framework’ to deliver system change through the convening of FG and GFFP
To explore options to become a legal entity (C.I.O., C.I.C, Charity, Co-operative)
Campaigning to ensure that free school meal and HAF provision is available to all children.
To work together to redistribute excess food to reduce the ecological footprint of the food system
To explore the issues surrounding food waste
We will support the exploration and development of community growing projects to enhance local food offer, through listening to current provision and supporting organisations to learn from, develop and test
Working with organisations seeking to improve land availability for small scale and community food growing,
We will support the exploration and development of community pantries, and social supermarket models through listening to current provision and supporting organisations to learn from, develop and test
To explore how FG can act as a conduit and support mechanism for organisations seeking funding and make the membership aware of funding opportunities.
Support projects and initiatives to help reduce loneliness and promote community cohesion through providing opportunities to join together around food – including growing, preparing, sharing, and celebrating

Long-term

Contribute to and collaborate on food mapping related activities
To create a sustainable local food economy through connecting local farmers, food provision and businesses with their communities and encouraging and supporting them to develop relationship
To contribute to and collaborate with organisations that are working to transform catering and food procurement

Integrated Local Delivery Framework

Feeding Gloucestershire has adopted an Integrated Local Delivery Framework, this framework has been utilised by Farming and Wildlife Advisory Group for over 10 years. This approach inspires and enables stakeholders and communities to come together to build resilience, while also delivering strategically the targets they must achieve, supported by an all-inclusive partnership of organisations working together at a local level.

Without support, people within communities can struggle to interact effectively on complex challenges with an often-baffling web of governance. This wastes time and resources, with stakeholders duplicating work and sometimes working against each other to attain conflicting objectives.

Core Themes of ILD

Local level

Works within the lowest appropriate national administrative structure (i.e., Community keyholders and leaders, parish, ward, or town), valuing local knowledge, culture, and sense of place of the people that live there. Connects

Facilitation

An independent third party (Feeding Gloucestershire) develops or supports a local management group that acts as the collective discussion forum for the area, with clear lines of communication to those public agencies with legal responsibilities and national organisations including Gloucestershire County Council, Feeding Britain, Soil association and the Trussell Trust.

Connect objectives

Seeks to deliver multiple strategic objectives within the defined area to maximise the wider area scale potential and maximise effective use of public, private and charitable funds

Community involvement

Seeks to strongly support and value the role and knowledge of local communities, who should play a central role in identifying issues and solutions, and integrating the delivery opportunities, thereby valuing, and enabling local action and releasing local resources.

Connect system ‘actors’

Connects groups of communities to food suppliers, retailers (including farmers and growing schemes) working across the area to build resilience for food supplies, reduce food waste, support the local economy and livelihoods, reduce food miles, make best use of local assets and resources, improve health and wellbeing, and ensure food supply meets needs

Stakeholders

Clarifies which statutory and non-statutory partners have an interest in the area so that they can be involved, and their strategic aims and objectives can be identified, coordinated, and delivered alongside wider objectives

Local management group (Network Board at county level with the work at district level being supported by the Network Coordinator and the Project Manager)

A transparent and inclusive forum for all those within the defined area to act and offer knowledge and resources to achieve multi objective delivery with all partners. This should involve organisations from the VCSE sector, alongside local government, and organisations with countywide remits.

Communication

Lines of communication must be kept open between stakeholders and partners should meet regularly to agree action, share intelligence, learning and resources, and with wider agencies to ensure wider objectives [for example, ‘regenerative agriculture’, climate change and the county council’s Levelling Up agenda] and legal obligations are met

Funding

Identifies multiple funding opportunities and match funding through open communication, skilled facilitation and joined up partnership working.

Enabling and Supporting

Enables people to understand how to take meaningful action, and in so doing builds capacity and capability, and improves social cohesion, health, and wellbeing.