Section 4: Impacts of food and financial insecurity

In Gateshead, our approach to food and financial insecurity is developing, we know that food insecurity experienced during childhood, harms health at the time and throughout the rest of life.

In 2018/19 the Gateshead Poverty Board worked with partners to develop the Gateshead Community Food Network. The idea came from feedback provided at the first Gateshead Poverty Conference in 2018 where the attendees from all sectors of Gateshead, agreed that food poverty should be a key priority in order to tackle poverty in Gateshead.

The Community Food Network now has a detailed interactive map and understanding of exactly where in Gateshead certain types of food support is available and how it can be accessed by partners and families.

This includes foodbanks, food co-ops, FareShare sites, supermarket donations, Breakfast Clubs, Free Meals, low cost meals and pay as you feel cafes. By working better together, the network members can maintain a dialogue with each other, this means far greater opportunity to operate in cohesion rather than isolation. When there are overstocks of food items, network members are able to notify the other members of what's available, resulting in partners sharing food and not wasting anything.

This has also allowed the network to share resource, such as volunteers, transport, collections and so on. Before the network existed, many partners were unaware of what other food support was available, even those operating in the same area as them which has increased collaboration between partners.