Cooking skills
learning
exchange
Welcome!
Kim Newstead
Introductions
• Introduce yourselves in your groups, and
discuss:
1.Your experiences of when you have targeted
what you do on a cooking course
(to suit the needs of a target group, i.e. new
parents, older men)
2. Your experiences of when you have tailored
what you do on a cooking course
(to suit the needs of an individual – such as
adapting their recipes or health messages )
What are the advantages and disadvantages of
tailoring and targeting?
Plan of today
This morning
• What’s cooking in Scotland? Part 3. Background to our cooking
skills work. Cooking skills study group
• Short break
• Small group activities: critically appraising your cooking
courses
12.45 Lunch
This afternoon
• Evaluating your cooking courses – Jacqui McDowell
• Small group activities
• Learning exchange
3.20pm Close and evaluation
Who are we?
Community Food and Health (Scotland) set up 1996
to support food and health activities in Scotland’s
low-income communities.
In 2013 we became part of NHS Health Scotland,
which is a nation board that aims to reduce health
inequalities and improve health.
Why we are here today - Cooking
courses
•
•
•
•
•
•
Popular with a wide
range of groups and
age ranges
Popular activity for
those who apply to our
small funding pots
Social aims/ fun
activity
Support independent
living skills/
employment skills
Learn about nutrition/
improve diet
Manage on a budget
Cooking skills courses – our role:
building evidence and improving
practice
• Aim to improve practice –
What’s Cooking in
Scotland? Part 1 (2012)
• Aim to help improve
evaluation i.e. funding for
groups to improve their
evaluation – What’s cooking
in Scotland Part 2. (2012)
• Commissioned research in
2012 on cooking courses
with families
And in 2014 we commissioned a review of
cooking skills courses
Led by Avril Blamey with Jacki Gordon
•
•
•
•
A realist review… Rather than just asking ‘what
works?’ We wanted to:
Learn from practitioners (trainers, facilitators,
community chefs)
evaluation reports from 81 courses.
find out what works, for whom why and in what
context? (Adults and families: skills, confidence,
knowledge, intention to change behaviour, nonnutrition outcomes)
What were the challenges?
• Reports from practitioners not ‘scientifically robust’
enough to provide enough evidence to link outcomes
(increased skills etc) to cooking courses
Solutions?
• Reviewers linked the practitioner methods of running a
course (or their ‘strategies’) to good practice – tailoring
and targeting and behaviour change theory
/concepts (NICE* guidelines)
• And some community development / asset based
approaches
* National Institute for health and care excellence
For you -Cooking skills practitioners …..review
conclusions
• Reaching those that can benefit
the most
• Lots of good, evidence based,
targeted and tailored courses
• Well received by participants
that had completed evaluation
activities
• Practitioners running courses
differently – good reasons to do
this
• Fit with community
development/ asset based
approaches
What’s cooking in Scotland? Part Three
Tools and ideas to help you
critically appraise your
cooking skills courses
Since the review - Cooking skills study group
set up
To build on the review and get more evidence, we have
• Set up a cooking skills study group (late 2015)
• 8 organisations – NHS, community and voluntary
• All regularly run cooking courses and will run them the same way
as usual
• Agreed set of outcomes they will look to measure against when
they evaluate – 4 courses each (32 courses in total)
• What works for whom, why and in what circumstances?
• Focus on vulnerable participants and parents on low-incomes
• Focus on one main strategy: ‘what happens to the food’
• Critical to have evaluation information about individual
participants in order to find out what is working for whom and
why
• Results – 2017! – Blog discusses some of the ideas from the
work
Context of your course/ participants’ lives
• Context of participants lives
• Your course strategies (what you do on your course)
- Informal nutrition info –individuals prepare the recipes alone –
eating together at the end – taking recipes home
Mechanisms / behaviour change concepts – reactions,
responses from participants.
My mates
I
This is
are eating
understand
relevant to
the food I
why I
me
made
should do
this
Outcomes – What difference your course is making for
participants
- Improved cooking skills –more varied diet
- More likely to use the recipe again - increased confidence to eat
with others –
Critically appraising your cooking
courses – first task – how do recipes
get chosen?
When you plan your cooking courses, do you plan…
1. Most of the time, the participants each choose their own
individual recipes (may be from a set of recipes or they
bring them in)
2.
Most of the time, participants choose the recipes between
them as a group
3. Most of the time, the person running the course chooses
the recipes
Critically appraising - how
the recipes get chosen
1. What do you hope this way of choosing
recipes achieves for participants
2. What challenges (if any) might you experience
with one or more participants with this
approach?
3. What can do to overcome these challenges
with these individuals?
Critically appraising your cooking
courses – first task – how do recipes
get chosen?
When you plan your cooking courses, do you plan…
1. Most of the time, the participants each choose their own
individual recipes (may be from a set of recipes or they
bring them in)
2.
Most of the time, participants choose the recipes between
them as a group
3. Most of the time, the person running the course chooses
the recipes
Critically appraising your cooking
courses – second task – what happens
to the food that has been prepared?
1.
Mostly, participants taste or eat the cooked food
together
2. Mostly, participants take the cooked food home with
them
3. Mostly, participants both taste some food and have
some to take home with them
Critically appraising –what
happens to the food
1. What do you hope this approach achieves for
participants?
2. What challenges (if any) might you experience
with one or more participants with this
approach?
3. What can do to overcome these challenges
with these individuals?