Grants reward food hygiene schemes

City of Bradford Metropolitan District Council (MDC)

Bradford MDC will focus on increasing food safety awareness and influencing food hygiene practices among mothers of new babies and very young children.

Initially, four pilot sessions are proposed in the Bradford South and West Primary Care Trust (PCT), which covers a wide and varied geographical and socio-economic area.

These informal sessions will be run by an environmental health officer (EHO) at postnatal classes organised by the health visitors.

After validation of these sessions, the EHO will produce an information pack and train the health visitors to enable them to provide accurate food safety advice at future postnatal classes.

Longer term it is hoped that health visitors in the other three PCTs in the Bradford district can be trained enabling the advice to be offered to new mothers across the whole district.

The sessions will focus on food poisoning and infection control, the '4Cs' (cooking, chilling, cross-contamination and cleaning), personal hygiene along with reference to farm visits, larger scale home catering for children' parties etc and the differing practices within ethnic groups.

In addition to the advice sessions, two food safety leaflets are to be produced, one for expectant mothers and one aimed at mothers of new babies and young children. It's hoped that these will be translated into Urdu, Bengali and Cantonese.

For further information on this scheme you can contact:

Annette Seal/Rebecca Ingham on
01274 434069
Annette.seal@bradford.gov.uk
Rebecca.ingham@bradford.gov.uk

City of Wakefield Metropolitan District Council

The Health Development Unit, based in Wakefield Metropolitan District Council`s Environmental Health Services, aims to raise the level of food hygiene awareness in the home environment by concentrating on the 4Cs in the five most deprived wards.

The food hygiene campaign will focus on:

• the training and awareness raising of community, schools and voluntary groups
• the awareness raising of health professionals including health visitors and health centre staff
• the general awareness raising of all residents

Publicity, in the form of a display and leaflets, will be used at various venues and supported by local media campaigns.

Public knowledge of food hygiene will be assessed by pre and post campaign questionnaires.

It will provide a unique opportunity to assess the effect of a concerted food hygiene campaign and whether key messages are absorbed by the general population and, in turn, whether this has an effect on food poisoning statistics.

For further information on this scheme you can contact:

Barbara Sands/Dennis Whalley on
01924 305 974/01924 305 392
BSands@wakefield.gov.uk
DWhalley@wakefield.gov.uk

City of Westminster

The City of Westminster's initiative aims to improve food safety in the home through the education of school children, their parents and teachers.

The initiative will deliver the messages asserted by the 4Cs with particular emphasis placed upon cross contamination, hand washing and the importance of hygiene for vulnerable groups.

Five costumed characters will feature in a two-part video production to demonstrate how poor food handling can lead to food poisoning and how this can be avoided through the use of good food handling practices.

The video and an accompanying workbook and teachers pack will be distributed to all participating schools.

The characters will visit a certain number of selected schools to act out the sketches, assist with the workshops and address parents and teachers.

The workshops will involve activities to demonstrate the importance of hand washing and the transmission of disease. The initiative will be evaluated with pre- and post- education questionnaires, evaluation forms and the results of competition entries.

The initiative will be planned and delivered in partnership with Westminster Primary Care Trust, the Healthy Schools Programme, local community groups, other City of Westminster services and private sector sponsors.

For further information on this scheme you can contact:

James Armitage on
020 7641 1205
jarmitage@westminster.gov.uk

Doncaster Metropolitan Borough Council

Doncaster has 11 out of its 21 wards in the 10% most deprived wards in England.

Within these wards, there are a number of vulnerable groups, for whom life skills, such as good food hygiene practices in their domestic kitchen, are an important learning need.

For these groups there is currently little or no relevant support material.

Supported living groups with mental health needs, those requiring rehabilitation after prolonged hospital stays, those with learning disabilities and children leaving care all need to have some knowledge of good food hygiene practice before they start preparing food for themselves or others.

The scheme proposes to produce support material based around the 4Cs, which could be used by the target client groups. The materials would be disseminated via this Authority's Health Education Unit (SaFE Team) and through Social Services.

The authority has a unit whose function is to review documentation and ensure that it is produced in a form suitable for client groups with special needs.

It is proposed that this unit will review the support material before publication.

The aim of the project is to provide a simple food safety management system that can be used by the client groups.

The evaluation will take the form of a trial in a sample of group homes. Feedback from the residents and home managers will be taken into account before rolling the system out to the remaining group homes in Doncaster.

For further information on this scheme you can contact:

Judith Moore/Enis Dalton on
01302 737 558
commercial@doncaster.gov.uk
nick.wellington@doncaster.gov.uk

Ealing Council

Ealing Council aims to increase understanding and awareness of the 4Cs in the Somali community, which has settled in the more deprived areas of the borough.

Recently, about 25 cafes have opened, offering dishes and drinks to the local community.

These cafes also serve as meeting places for the business community.

The scheme focuses on breaking down barriers by using the community's own experiences, by building trust and working in partnership with Somali caterers.

It aims to help Somali businesses meet the necessary food hygiene and safety standards so that they can move into mainstream catering.

Fun and the promotion of the 4Cs will be at the centre of the project and the message will be delivered by way of informal discussions, business forums and surgeries.

There will also be drop-in sessions for housewives and mothers, training videos, posters and a food hygiene course in the Somali language.

The scheme will be evaluated by a number of performance indicators, which will relate to qualitative and quantitative measures. Results will be collected and collated from feedback, questionnaires, course evaluations and attendance records at functions and meetings.

For further information on this scheme you can contact:

Ann Hodges/Helen Wilkie on
020 8825 7853
Helen.Wilkie@ealing.gov.uk
Ann.Hodges@ealing.gov.uk

London Borough of Camden

The scheme is to provide a play to primary school children within the borough. It is based on the themes of healthy eating and food hygiene and called Captain Cholesterol and the Grannies from Mars.

It has been created by the Quantum Theatre for Science and is available in both Key Stage 1 and 2 versions.

It is a fast moving highly interactive musical comedy that fully engages the attention and interest of the children.

At the conclusion of the piece, information packs are handed out to the audience.

In addition to this, and as an evaluation exercise, Camden Food Safety will be distributing quizzes for the children to enter for which there are prizes available.

There has been co-ordination with the personal and social and health development officers in each school in order to produce this scheme and the council will endeavour to co-ordinate the timing of the show in each school with their own work on these topics.

For further information on this scheme you can contact:

Eileen McGroary on
020 7974 2264
Eileen.mcgroary@camden.gov.uk

Northampton Borough Council

Our scheme involves visiting local schools, prioritising those in the more deprived wards of Northampton, to carry out hand washing workshops based around the theme of 'The Germinator.'

The aim is to raise awareness among pupils of how hand washing is a simple yet very effective method of stopping the spread of germs and therefore preventing illness.

It is hoped that the children will then take the information home and spread the message further.

Workshops will involve the use of UV hand inspection chambers, presentations, quizzes and a competition to design a campaign logo.

The winning logo will then be put onto children's plastic lunch boxes.

Every pupil attending a workshop will receive a lunch box to act as reminder to wash their hands before they eat. A teacher's pack will also be developed.

This will be left with the class teachers for them to use in the future.

Teachers of classes that we do not get the opportunity to visit will also be given a pack. Environmental health officers will work closely with the Food for Thought Team at the Borough Council.

Visits will begin in June 2004 to coincide with the start of National Food Safety Week.

For further information on this scheme you can contact:

Louise Eaton/Janet Perkin on
01604 837 844/ 01604 837 661
leaton@northampton.gov.uk
jperkin@northampton.gov.uk

Oldham Metropolitan Borough Council (MBC)

Oldham MBC is working in partnership with Oldham Theatre Workshop to produce a play that directly targets young people who will probably be employed in the food service industry for some period during the following five years.

The production will portray a group of pupils who attend an end of school leavers' ball that they will never forget, but for all the wrong reasons.

The pupils will experience at first hand the consequences of poor hygiene and how a menial role in the food service industry can play an important part in food safety.

It is anticipated that 'forum theatre' will be used.

This involves the direct participation of the audience whereby the actors 'freeze' when a member of the audience wants to interject to correct the actions or words of an actor.

After the production there will be discussion on the issues raised and the effect of the production on the pupils.

The initiative will be evaluated in two ways. Food safety officers will visit the school prior to the production for a 'warm up' session and raise food safety issues with the pupils.

The pupils will complete a simple questionnaire at this session and will complete the same questionnaire after they have experienced the production. In this way the extent of food safety information they have received can be assessed.

One year later a representative sample of pupils will be interviewed and assessed as to what they have remembered, and how the production has influenced them.

For further information on this scheme you can contact:

Kathryn Kelly on
0161 911 4455
kathryn.kelly@ex.oldham.gov.uk

Oswestry Borough Council

Derwen College is a specialist residential college committed to promoting, through inclusive learning, the vocational, educational, personal and social development of young people with a wide range of learning difficulties and disabilities.

The environmental health department at Oswestry Borough Council will work jointly with staff at the college to produce a food hygiene toolkit that will assist the learning process.

The departments included in the project are Hospitality and Housekeeping, Catering, Independent Living Skills, and Retail.

The aim of the project will be to deliver the prevention of cross contamination and its application to both the working and domestic situations for young adults with learning difficulties and disabilities, reinforcing the 4Cs messages through learning methods that are appropriate to their needs.

Throughout the duration of the project the college will maintain a general focus on food hygiene for its students, staff and visitors, using every opportunity to promote food hygiene.

The objectives of the project include the development of appropriate learning aids and innovative teaching methods, the integration of the syllabus for the Foundation Certificate in Food Hygiene into the college curriculum and completion of the Foundation Certificate course and exam.

Evaluation will be the number of students gaining the Foundation qualification and qualitative analysis of feedback from tutors, support workers, students, staff and visitors to the college.

For more information on this scheme you can contact:

Diane Purcell on
01691 677 213
diane.purcell@oswestry-bc.gov.uk

Sheffield City Council

Sheffield City Council in conjunction with Agewell provide support to approximately 217 lunch clubs operating within the community.

Elderly volunteers usually undertake the catering in lunch clubs and each club can cater for 15-100 elderly people.

Approximately 22% of the lunch clubs are run by ethnic minorities, for ethnic minorities. The target group is therefore a large proportion of the vulnerable residents of Sheffield.

General inspections have identified specific hazards associated with the operation of lunch clubs, such as volunteers catering from home, sometimes the day before, and transporting food to a community room.

The aim is, therefore, to deliver food hygiene messages in a simple way based on the 4Cs.

We have therefore made links with Agewell and the Sheffield City Council's Voluntary Sector Liaison Group to try and develop a new approach.

Our objectives are to:

• build sustainable and effective relationships between lunch clubs and the Health Protection Service
• deliver more appropriate food hygiene messages based on the 4 Cs
• assist with hazard analysis and legislative compliance
• reduce the risk of food poisoning outbreaks within this vulnerable group

For further information on this scheme you can contact:

Bernadette Kitching on
0114 273 4637
bernadette.kitching@sheffield.gov.uk

Stockport Metropolitan Borough Council

The aim of the project is to help reduce the spread of infectious disease among primary aged children and the knock-on effects.

A facilitator will spend half a day in each school raising awareness of the importance of good hand hygiene using a range of fun activities.

They will also work with the teachers, school nurses and midday assistants to ensure the message is emphasised throughout the day.

To ensure the sustainability of the project, the message will be reinforced via a teaching resource pack, which has been developed with the help of education and a local primary headmistress.

The pack contains support material linked to various subject areas of the curriculum.

The subject areas range from life science and living things to art and design, where the children can design posters or create microbes using pasta and dough.

The pupils will also be given a hand washing information sheet so that the message can make the transition from school to home

The project is being supported by the Local Education Authority, Sure Start workers, the Primary Care Trust and PZ Cussons.

For more information on this scheme you can contact:

Ann Marie McCullough on
0161 474 4192
ann-marie.mccullough@stockport.gov.uk

Taunton Deane Borough Council

Taunton Deane Borough Council in conjunction with a commercial partner will be developing 'Foodo', a board game to be used for educational purposes within local schools, youth groups, etc, focussing on a number of key hygiene issues, such as cross contamination and hand washing.

The aim of the game is to identify how and where a food poisoning outbreak occurred, thus raising awareness of how poor hygiene practices can have serious public health consequences.

The target audience for the proposal is children within Key Stage 2 and local community groups and in particular children from deprived wards within the Borough.

Schools and other groups will receive an attractive package, encompassing a full teaching pack and board game. It is intended that the campaign will be informative and educational, but above all fun.

The use of a game format should encourage target groups to engage with the subject.

This project will build on current work with schools and form an important part of food hygiene awareness work in the future.

The game may also be developed for use on food hygiene training courses.

For further information on this scheme you can contact:

Joanne Mulholland on
01823 356 342
j.mulholland@tauntondeane.gov.uk

The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea

The scheme put forward by the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea aims to increase general awareness of vulnerable groups in the community about food hygiene/safety.

Working in partnership with the Kensington and Chelsea Primary Care Trust, tailor made food hygiene courses of no more than three hours duration will be developed for 100 vulnerable local people.

Sustainability of the programme will be encouraged by providing support for community groups and developing links with the NHS interpretation services.

This scheme will contribute to promoting the national food safety programme at a local level.

The scheme will be evaluated by assessing general knowledge, awareness and improved practice of participants around food safety.

Evaluation of the programme would involve trainees running displays in their community groups for National Food Safety Week.

For further information on this scheme you can contact:

Euan MacAuslan on
020 7341 5606
euan.macauslan@rbkc.gov.uk

Torbay Council

The scheme put forward by Torbay Council aims to increase the knowledge and understanding of the Food Standards Agency 4Cs campaign among families with young children aged under four.

Food Hygiene awareness sessions will be run for the staff of Surestart Torbay and will aim to provide them with basic food hygiene information, which they can then pass on to the parents of young children during their home visits to the families.

A series of food hygiene talks will also be given to mother and toddler groups in Torbay and will again be based around the 4Cs of the Food Standards Agency campaign.

Both of the above activities will be supported by the production of a 'Foodsafe' pack which will consist of a plastic food container filled with information on food safety and other related topics such as the '5 a day' campaign.

The scheme will be evaluated by questionnaires given to Surestart staff and evaluation cards within the Foodsafe boxes. A number of families receiving the Foodsafe packs will also be visited to discuss their own views on the information given out.

For further information on this scheme you can contact:

Helen Perkins on
01803 208 009
helen.perkins@torbay.gov.uk

West Berkshire District Council

The scheme put forward by West Berkshire Council has taken a 'cradle to grave' approach and has identified several target vulnerable groups, such as children, older people and those with learning disabilities, who are more likely to suffer from food related illnesses and would gain a lot from some form of food hygiene training and education.

A programme of activities aims to deliver the safe food hygiene message to each section of the target group in turn, in the most appropriate way.

The scheme aims to train all Year 6 school children (key stage 2) and a wider age group of children with learning disabilities, throughout the district in safe food hygiene practices and get the message across in a fun and interesting way.

This will include an educational play performed by an independent Theatre group. Carers of vulnerable groups and adults with learning disabilities will be trained and put through the Chartered Institute of Environmental Health (CIEH) foundation food hygiene certificate.

Finally, a take away 'home pack' will also be produced, which will encourage the sharing of information.

A questionnaire will be used pre and post training of those involved, to test their comparative food hygiene knowledge, and to measure the degree of dissemination of information to family, friends and colleagues.

For further information on this scheme you can contact:

Sarah Langley on
01635 579 410
slangley@westberks.gov.uk