Bradford and Keighley

“Our vision is a Bradford and Keighley where everyone has access to affordable good food, and all families and individuals are living with food security.”

The Feeding Bradford and Keighley group has developed an extensive network of Affordable Food Clubs. Specialist Advice Workers are available within food projects as part of the Pathways from Poverty programme, and families are supported all year round through school holiday programmes of food and fun.

Affordable Food Clubs in this area are listed here.

The mission

Feeding Bradford and Keighley is a passionate and dedicated network of more than 90 organisations committed to ending hunger in the local community. The group aims to enable the district’s food aid sector to:

1. Ensure accessible good food in a crisis – so people are better supported
2. Supporting providers to support service users to move on from or avoid food crisis – so people have better engagement
3. Low-cost community solutions – so people have better empowerment
4. Contributing to understanding of food insecurity and informing policy and practice – so people are better informed

How we work

Feeding Bradford and Keighley is made up of charities, social enterprises, health providers, religious groups, housing associations, community projects, statutory organisations and businesses.

What we’ve achieved

Key activities implemented by Feeding Bradford and Keighley include:

• Support for emergency food aid providers
• Publication of free meal provision directories
• Advice worker supporting service users in some of our local food settings
• Actively supporting food banks and meal providers during the Covid 19 crisis
• Collecting monthly data about usage from foodbanks
• Collating and making publicly available information about where to get food help at www.bradfordfoodbanks.org.uk
• Supporting smaller foodbanks to help clients with fuel top ups via our work with the Fuel Bank Foundation
• Collating information for food aid providers at www.feedingbradford.org.uk

What’s next

In the coming year Feeding Bradford and Keighley plans to maintain and extend their network of support, and promote Healthy Start by training Healthy Start champions in foodbanks and pantries.

We are working to increase our low cost food provision by supporting partners across the district to widen the reach of low cost food stalls, shops and cafe provision. In particular we are encouraging the uptake of FoodSavers partnerships with our local credit union (see www.foodsavers.org.uk) – a programme run by Inn Churches. We are working with partnerships that help people avoid falling into a food crisis, or enabling them to move out of a food crisis more quickly including advice services and drugs and alcohol agencies.

For more information and to get involved please get in touch with Cathy Henwood at hello@feedingbradford.org.uk

• 8.20% of adults suffered from hunger
• 19.87% struggled to access food
• 11.83% worried about not having enough food

About this research:

The University of Sheffield have published statistics of UK adult food insecurity at Local Authority scale. You can view the map of measures of food insecurity here.

Hungry is defined as having skipped food for a whole day or more in the previous month or indicated they were hungry but not eaten because they could not afford or get access to food.

Struggle is defined as a positive response to at least one of the following:

• Sought help accessing food
• Skipped or shrank meal
• Gave a reason for not having enough food

Worry is defined as choosing very worried or fairly worried about getting food.