MARCH 2016 VOLUME 29 – ISSUE 2I S S N 1 0 3 2 - 6 1 7 0

Beyond Emergency Food: Responding to Food Insecurity and HomelessnessBeyond Emergency Food: Responding to Food Insecurity and Homelessness

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Contents

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Council to Homeless PersonsJenny Smith Chief Executive Officer

Kate Colvin Manager — Policy andCommunications

Ian Gough Manager —Consumer Programs

Lynette Deakes Office Manager

Noel Murray Publications Coordinator,Parity Editor

Eddie Staltari and Media and Catherine McGauran Communications Officers

Angela Kyriakopoulos HAS Coordinator

Cassandra Bawden Peer Education andSupport Program Team Leader

Trish Westmore Capacity Building andPolicy Officer

Leonie Kenny Service Coordination ProjectManager

Akke Halma Bookkeeper

Address 2 Stanley Street Collingwood Melbourne VIC 3066

Phone (03) 8415 6200

Fax (03) 9419 7445

E-mail parity@chp.org.au

Website www.chp.org.au

Promotion of Conferences,Events and PublicationsOrganisations are invited to have their promotionalfliers included in the monthly mailout of Parity.Rates: $90 National distribution, $70 Statewidedistribution only.

Write for Parity!Contributions to Parity are welcome. Each issue of Parity has a central focus or theme.However, prospective contributors should not feelrestricted by this as Parity seeks to discuss the wholerange of issues connected with homelessness and theprovision of housing and services to people who arehomeless. Where necessary, contributions will beedited. Where possible this will be done inconsultation with the contributor.

Parity on the CHP Websitewww.chp.org.au/services/parity-magazine/Contributions can be sent by email toparity@chp.org.au in a Microsoft Word or rtf format.If this option is not possible, contributions can befaxed on (03) 9419 7445 or mailed to CHP.

Proposed 2016 Parity Publications ScheduleNB: Please note that this may be subject to change.Please check out the CHP website: www.chp.org.aufor updates. April: The Future of Youth Homelessness

SupportMay: The Royal Commission into Family

Violence: Recommendations andResponses

June: Outer Metropolitan and Growth AreaHomelessness

July: The Role of Community Developmentin Responding to Homelessness

August: Children and Homelessness: Protectingthe Most Vulnerable

September: Indigenous Homelessnessin Australia and New Zealand

October: Sustaining a Home: New Directionsin Housing Support

November: Responding to Homelessness in NSW(TBC)

ArtworkThe artwork for this edition was also provided byother participants in the Youth Affairs Council ofWestern Australia Home is Where My Heart Is projectand artists from the Jesuit Social Services ArtfulDodgers art program.

The views and opinions expressed in Parityare not necessarily those of CHP.

Editorial | 3Jenny Smith, Chief Executive Officer, Council to Homeless Persons

Feature — Beyond Emergency Food: Responding to Food Insecurity and HomelessnessIntroduction | 4The Australian Food Security Research Collaboration: Rebecca Lindberg, The Australian Health PolicyCollaboration, Victoria University, Sue Kleve and Liza Barbour, School of Clinical Sciences, Faculty of Medicine,Nursing and Health Sciences, Monash University, Sue Booth, School of Health Sciences, Flinders University andDanielle Gallegos, School of Exercise and Nutrition Sciences, Queensland University of Technology

Chapter 1: Foot Insecurity and Homelessness in ContextA Slippery Slope: | 7The Social Gradient of Food Insecurity and Healthy Eating in AustraliaHolley Jones, Senior Project Officer and Kerry McGrath, Director, Community Programs, Australian Red Cross

An Interview with Rob Rees | 10Rebecca Lindberg

The Right to Food Coalition: From Conference to Coalition | 12Liza Barbour, Lecturer, Public Health Nutrition, Department of Nutrition and Dietetics, Monash University

The Human Right to Food | 13Nick Rose, Sustain, The Australian Food Network, William Angliss, Rebecca Lindberg The Australian HealthPolicy Collaboration, Victoria University and Martin Caraher, Centre for Food Policy, City University London

Food Alone Will Not End Hunger | 16Russell Shields, Churchill Fellow, Food Justice Truck Manager, Asylum Seeker Resource Centreand Founder and Chair of The Community Grocer

Chapter 2: Consumer and Client Perspectives:The Experience of Food InsecuritySix Mouths to Feed | 18Haley Price, Marketing and Communications Manager, St Vincent de Paul Society Victoria

Food Insecurity and Homelessness | 20Lisa Peterson, Peer Education Support Program Graduate

Consumer Voices — Responding to Food Insecurity and Homelessness | 22Consumer Voices is a regular feature in Parity. Articles are written by and with consumers toensure they have a say about the issues that directly affect them.

What is the Meaning of Food for Young People Experiencing Homelessness? | 24Rowena Yamazaki, Community Nutritionist, Community Health Services, Denise Fry, Evaluation Officer,Community Health Services, Sydney Local Health District and Jessica Fielding, Policy Officer, Yfoundations

A New Chapter | 26Haley Price, Marketing and Communications Manager, St Vincent de Paul Society Victoria

Chapter 3: Responding to Food InsecurityResponding to Food Insecurity: | 27The Role of Dietitians and the Challenges they FaceKatrina Doljanin, Dietitian, cohealth

A Decade of Good Food — Café Meals in the Geelong Region: | 30A Ten Year ReflectionAlyssa Huxtable and Jill Whelan

Exploring the Experience of Food Insecurity | 32Among Mothers Seeking Asylum in Melbourne Using PhotovoiceChrystal Yam, Registered Nutritionist

The Sacred Heart Mission Meals Program | 35Chris Middendorp, Manager, Sacred Heart Central, Sacred Heart Mission

Towards Dignity on a Plate | 37Tony McCosker, CEO, St Mary’s House of Welcome

Working in Partnership with the Charitable Food Sector | 39to Better Meet the Food Needs of People in PerthChristina Pollard, Curtin University, Sue Booth, Flinders University of South Australia, Andrea Begley, CurtinUniversity, Deborah Kerr, Curtin University, Bruce Mackintosh, University of Western Australia, Jonine Jancey,Curtin University, Cathy Campbell and Jill Whelan, Deakin University, Rex Milligan, FoodBank WA, Joel Berg,New York City Coalition Against Hunger, Bernie Fisher, Western Australian Council of Social Service,Kris Halliday, Salvation Army and Martin Caraher, City University London

Being Frank | 41Haley Price, Marketing and Communications Manager, St Vincent de Paul Society Victoria

FoodMate by SecondBite: | 42Paving the Way to Food Security Through Hands-on Nutrition EducationNicole Vaughan, Volunteer SecondBite, Liza Barbour, Monash University, Chrystal Yam, SecondBite

OpinionsLivia Carusi and Danusia Kaska | 45General Manager, Membership and Development, and Soup Van Program Operations Manager

Lyn Morgain | 46Chief Executive Officer, cohealth

EditorialJenny Smith, Chief Executive Officer, Council to Homeless Persons

Like homelessness, food insecurity andhunger are the direct consequence ofpoverty. People find themselveswithout a roof over their head and nofood on the table when structural oreconomic factors intersect withpersonal issues. Structural problemslike a labor market with increasinglyinsecure and poorly paid work and aninadequate social security safety net,intersect with the lack of low costhousing , and often, with personalcrises in people’s lives, like relationshipbreakdown, unemployment, orphysical or mental health issues.

As a sector we advocate for thestructural changes that will endhomelessness: adequate incomesupport when it is needed as well asthe suite of government policies thatproduce a pipeline of housingaffordable to those on the lowestincomes; as well as the supportservices that people need to bothaccess and keep that housing.

It is hard to accept, and yet the realityis, that our current policy settingsallow a growing and ever wideninggap between the ‘haves’ and the‘have-nots’ in our affluent community.And while this is the case, our

responses to food security have tocontinue to innovate and evolve.

Several of the contributors to thisedition of Parity make reference to theApril 2004 ‘One Meal to the Next’Food Assistance and Food Insecurityedition. In the 12 years that havepassed since that edition we havewitnessed several changes in thecomplexion of both state and federalgovernments in Australia and quite afew different iterations of both nationaland state/territory homelessnesspolicies and frameworks.

However despite these changes, foodinsecurity for people experiencinghomelessness remains. Inevitably withincreasing homelessness, and eitherno or unhelpful change to policysettings, food insecurity is an evenbigger problem than it was in 2004.

This current edition BeyondEmergency Food: Responding toFood Insecurity and Homelessnessshowcases the changes in theapproach to food insecurity in the lastdozen years. The edition highlightsmany of the new and innovativeprograms and services that havedeveloped.

The emergence of innovations likeSTREAT, Second Bite, The Right toFood Coalition and Café Meals, toname just a few, now work alongsidelong established emergency foodresponses like the Vinnies Soup Vans,Sacred Heart Mission, St Mary’s Houseof Welcome (here in Victoria) and thenow national Foodbank organisation.

Many of these new initiatives proposechanging the paradigm of foodinsecurity and the related response,and viewing for example, foodinsecurity through a rights-basedframework that tackles the causes offood insecurity.

In addition to providers of innovativeprograms, this edition features severalarticles by people using, or who haveused, food security programs. Theseauthors send a clear message aboutthe value attached to provision ofquality food, providing materialsupport where it is needed, but alsoalleviating the exclusion felt by thoseexperiencing hunger. It is also clearthe role meal programs play insupporting social inclusion, providingfriendly environments and connectionat a time in people’s lives when theyare often isolated and alone.

This edition of Parity provides theopportunity to appreciate theseemergency food programs and thework and commitment of the hundredsof volunteers and other service workersthat make them possible. It alsochallenges us to consider afresh theinjustice of homelessness and hunger,and how we can eradicate them in ourcommunity.

AcknowledgementsCHP would like to thank andacknowledge all the edition sponsorsand likewise, all those involved in thedevelopment and preparation of thisedition of Parity.

Our special thanks go to St Vincentde Paul, the major sponsor of thisedition and in particular to LiviaCarusi and Danusia Kuska for theirwork in getting the edition off theground. Our thanks as well to otheredition sponsors, cohealth, the RedCross, St Mary’s House of Welcome,Sacred Heart Mission, the SydneyFood Fairness Alliance and the RightTo Food Coalition.

Finally, this edition would not havebeen possible without the work andinput of Rebecca Lindberg at allstages of its development andpreparation.

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IntroductionThe Australian Food Security Research Collaboration:Rebecca Lindberg, The Australian Health Policy Collaboration, Victoria University,Sue Kleve and Liza Barbour, School of Clinical Sciences, Faculty of Medicine, Nursing and HealthSciences, Monash University,Sue Booth, School of Health Sciences, Flinders University andDanielle Gallegos, School of Exercise and Nutrition Sciences, Queensland University of Technology

‘My food budget has disappeared.My son’s health is affected.Cheap food, carbohydrates.You get fat.No vegetables in nearly three weeks’

— Kate Connelly. What body part do I need to sell?

Jobs Australia, 2010.

A roof over your head and food inyour stomach are two fundamentalhuman rights. In a country likeAustralia, where food appearsabundant and there is a high standardof living, we may assume that theserights are met for all. Tragically this isnot the case. Conservative estimatessuggest four per cent of Australianhouseholds (approximately 884,000)experience food insecurity and over105,000 people in Australia arehomeless.

This special edition of Parity isdedicated to exploring the livedexperience of food insecurity anddiscussing a range of initiatives thathave been created to alleviate andprevent food insecurity. We will brieflyintroduce the edition by: discussingthe cycle of homelessness, foodinsecurity and poor health todemonstrate the acute need forimproved policy and practice; andreflect upon the past decade and thenext, in regards to the pursuit of foodsecurity for all.

The Cycle of Homelessness,Food Insecurity and PoorHealthFood insecurity, much likehomelessness, is a symptom ofpoverty and social exclusion.It usually manifests when a personal,health or financial crisis occurs.Those who are experiencinghomelessness, in all its forms,including those with insecure housingtenure, ‘couch surfers’, staying inshelters or sleeping rough, may be

forced to acquire, prepare andconsume food via means that are notconsidered socially or culturallyacceptable.

Individuals experiencing foodinsecurity describe a range of copingstrategies such as reducing meal sizes,adults foregoing their food forchildren, purchasing cheap foods ofpoor nutritional value, relyinglong-term on charitable food servicesor employing unorthodox foodacquisition such as ‘dumpster diving’,

begging or theft. Insecure housingand changes to social security benefitshave been identified as the primarytriggers for the uptake of food relief.1

Among food insecure householdswith children, the harmful healthconsequences include higher risks ofsome birth defects, iron deficiencyanaemia in children and higherprobability of behavioural anddevelopmental problems duringchildhood.2, 3, 4 Among food insecureadults, the consequences include

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increased risk of being overweight,nutrient inadequacies, mental healthproblems and stress.5, 6, 7

Food insecure adults can also havehigher levels of risk factors forcardiovascular diseases anddiabetes.8, 9 Older people whoexperience food insecurity have lowerself-reported wellbeing.10

People in Australia experiencinghomelessness have compromisednutrition and feel stressed andanxious about not having enough toeat.11 While national costs have notbeen calculated, in Tasmania thecosts to their healthcare systemresulting from food insecurity havebeen conservatively estimated at$60 million per year.12

Food insecurity is both a by-productof, and can be a precursor to,homelessness, poverty and socialexclusion. There is a strong case foraction on food insecurity in Australiaand the need for comprehensivepolicy and informed andinter-sectorial practice is paramount.

More than Ten Years OnIn 2004 Parity published an edition onfood insecurity and homelessness.Since then, our assessment of actionand progress is as follows:

The evidence has grown helping•

us to understand the underlyingcauses and consequences of foodinsecurity. We have moreaccessible national data on thecosts of a healthy food basket, theprevalence of homelessness andfood insecurity by household.At the community level, we arestarting to see a picture emergeon the use of food relief servicesand food insecurity measured bytwo states and some localgovernment areas. At the sametime, this valuable data iscollected irregularly and without acomprehensive national collationand reporting. Furthermore,people experiencinghomelessness are likely excluded.The capacity of case managers,•

volunteers and community cooksthat are the frontline workforce for

emergency food relief isincreasing. For example, RedCross training program, acommunity of practice website,and SecondBite’s Fresh NEDprogram are available to staff andvolunteers (described on pages 7and 42). However, the burden onthese staff is becoming untenableas demand for services increaseswithout increases in funding.The term ‘food insecurity’ has•

advanced beyondmisinterpretations of ‘food safety’.This term is now more mainstreamamongst workers and researchers,providing a common languageand framework to help respond tothe nutritional needs of peopleexperiencing homelessness andpoverty, alongside their otherneeds. Importantly the termshould not be applied toonarrowly — food insecurity hasramifications for nutrition andhealth, but the optimal long-termsolutions are not necessarily ‘food’solutions, they are housing, health,and poverty reduction strategies.The debate has shifted from one•

of food poverty and charity to onedemanding food as a fundamentalhuman right. This underpins theemergence of food justice groupssuch as the Right to FoodCoalition and Community FoodHubs, and social enterprises likeStreat.While it is difficult to estimate the•

number of community foodprograms that were operating2004, today there areapproximately 3,000 to 4,000frontline pantries, kitchens andemergency food relief providers,highlighting and incredible volumeof community willingness to tacklethis issue. Furthermore, a linkbetween these services has beenmade nationwide through thework of Australian Council ofSocial Services, the askizzy.comapp and the national foodrescue/bank services.However, the charitable food•

sector was not designed to dealwith regular and persistentrequests for emergency foodrelief. While the work is admirableit signals the failure of our systemto adequately address theunderlying causes of foodinsecurity. It has become the majorresponse from government forboth short-term and long-term

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food insecurity — and for manyhouseholds it has become anadaptive strategy. To trulyameliorate food insecurity, theFederal Government must takeurgent steps to implement povertyreduction measures such asindexed social security payments,stable full-time employmentopportunities and affordablehousing.13

Our Hope for Ten Years in theFutureIf the next food insecurity edition ofParity occurs in ten years, we wouldlike to report that all of the followinghas occurred. Our experiencesuggests, however, that some areachievable and others are aspirationalhopes for the next 10 years:

AchievableMore comprehensive and•

sophisticated methods to quantifythe number of peopleexperiencing food insecurity andother drivers of homelessness andpoverty.Comprehensive regular•

monitoring through a nationalhealth survey of this issuenationally, and specialisedmonitoring for at risk-groups, suchas people affected byhomelessness. This would allow usto track progress and improveaccountability for everyone’s rightto food, health and shelter.Analysis of the national social and•

economic cost of food insecurity inorder to galvanise political actionwith fiscal arguments.Public debate around levels of•

domestic hunger.A responsive charitable food•

sector, which is supported byadequate funding and training,enabling frontline services toprovide nutritious, dignified andinclusive emergency food relief.Along with a charitable foodsector that has the capacity,knowledge and skills to supportand advocate for an end to foodpoverty

AspirationalAustralia fulfils the obligation to•

ensure every person in Australiato achieves the human right tofood. Rights based approachesto food insecurity offer analternative view but progress onthe realisation of food as a

human right is likely to be slow.Rights frameworks contribute tore-framing the debate andwidening the public discourse(for example, the involvement ofthose in the legal fraternity).Shift the framing of food•

insecurity responses as charityto being about human rights.This may be realised through anAustralian Charter of Rights.Index living wages and Centrelink•

payments to the Consumer PriceIndex to enable the purchase ofhealthy food.National policy leadership on•

poverty reduction and food andnutrition security. This will includepopulation level and specialisedsupport for marginalised groups.This will be achieved by aMinisterial portfolio within theDepartment of Prime Minister andCabinet, similar to the Minister forSocial Inclusion.Community voices and•

engagement helping toco-design workable solutionsacross non-profits, governmentand business, emulating foodrights projects in the UnitedStates of America.

In conclusion, significant work liesahead, particularly if theseaspirational hopes are to beachieved. The Council to HomelessPersons have expertly prepared thisspecial edition on food insecurity ata time where there is pressure forpolitical reform, globally and locally,to better meet the needs of peopleaffected by homelessness, hardshipand hunger. In this edition of Parityyou will have the chance to readabout the perspectives of thepeople who use emergency foodrelief and discover their ideas forimprovements to service and policy.On pages 12 and 13, there is aunique analysis on Australia’scommitment to the right to food asenshrined in the UniversalDeclaration of Human Rights.Insights from the charitable foodsector will be shared, viacontributions from food banks, soupkitchens and community chefs andinternational advocates will imparttheir experience from abroad. Wehope that for those new to this area,this edition will be a spring boardinto action, and for those who haveexperienced food insecurity orworked alongside those who have,

we envisage lessons shared,courage renewed and a clearer pathforward to bring about solutionsbeyond emergency food.

Endnotes

1. Lambie-Mumford H, Crossley D, Jensen E,Verbeke M and Dowler E 2014, HouseholdFood Security: A Review of Food Aid,Report to Defra, available at:www.gov.uk/government/publications/food-aid-research-report (accessed 21 February2014).

2. Carmichael S, Yang W, Herring A, AbramsB, Shaw G 2007, Maternal food insecurity isassociated with increased risk of certainbirth defects, Journal of Nutrition, vol.137,no.9, pp.2087–2092.

3. Eicher-Miller H, Mason A, Weaver C,McCabe G, Boushey C 2009, Foodinsecurity is associated with iron deficiencyanaemia in US adolescents, AmericanJournal of Clinical Nutrition, vol.90, no.5,pp.1358–1371.

4. Ramsey R, Giskes K, Turrell G, Gallegos D2011, Food insecurity among Australianchildren: Potential determinants, healthand developmental consequences, Journalof Child Health Care, vol.15, no.4,pp.401–416.

5. Burns C 2004, A review of the literaturedescribing the link between poverty, foodinsecurity and obesity with specificreference to Australia, Deakin University,Melbourne.

6. Kirkpatrick S, Tarasuk V 2008, Foodinsecurity is associated with nutrientinadequacies among Canadian adults andadolescents, Journal of Nutrition, vol.138,no.3, pp.604–612.

7. Carter K, Kruse K, Blakely T, Collings S2011, The association of food security withpsychological distress in New Zealand andany gender differences, Social ScienceMedicine, vol. 72, no. 9, pp. 1463–71.

8. Seligman H, Laraia B, Kushel M 2010, Foodinsecurity is associated with chronic diseaseamong low-income NHANES participants,Journal of Nutrition, vol.140, no.2,pp.304–310.

9. Gucciardi E, Vahabi M, Norris N, Del MonteJ, Farnum C 2014, The intersectionbetween food insecurity and diabetes: Areview, Current Nutrition Reports, no.3,pp.324–332.

10. Temple J 2006, Food insecurity amongolder Australians: Prevalence, correlatesand wellbeing, Australia’s Journal ofAgeing, vol.25, no.3, pp.158–63.

11. Booth S 2006, Eating Rough: Food sourcesand acquisition practices of homelessyoung people in Adelaide, South Australia,Public Health Nutrition, vol.9, no.2,pp.212–218.

12. Healthy Food Access Tasmania 2016,Submission to Healthy Tasmania: 5 yearstrategic plan.

13. Loopstra R, Dachner N and Tarasuk V(2015) An Exploration of theUnprecedented Decline in the Prevalenceof Household Food Insecurity inNewfoundland and Labrador, 2007–2012,Canadian Public Policy, vol.41, no.3,pp.191–206.

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Chapter 1: Food Insecurity and Homelessness in ContextA Slippery Slope: The Social Gradient ofFood Insecurity and Healthy Eating in AustraliaHolley Jones, Senior Project Officer and Kerry McGrath, Director, Community Programs, Australian Red Cross

Australian Red Cross believes thateasy access to affordable healthyfood is a fundamental need and ahuman right.

‘While it is proper to recogniseand laud the success of those thatwork to alleviate food insecurity, itis also only proper to ask how it ispossible for the system andstructure of inequality thatproduces this need to havebecome an accepted part of oursocial landscape’

— CHP editorial, 2004

In the 2004 edition of Parity thethen CEO of the Council toHomeless Persons closed theeditorial with a powerful statementabout the casual acceptance ofinequality-driven food insecurity ina country as wealthy as Australia.

This paper will reflect briefly on theefforts made to alleviate foodinsecurity since Parity first focussed

on food security 12 years ago.We consider the fundamental issueof inequality that enables foodinsecurity to persist, noting therelated social gradient in diet-related disease. This analysis of thecauses of food insecurity hasresulted in a promising shift towardsconsidering the social determinantsof healthy eating and food accessfrom research and public healthinstitutions as well as organisationssuch as Red Cross. This is driving amore comprehensive response andproviding a promising direction forfood and nutrition policy to make alasting impact on the right to goodfood for everyone.

Recognising Achievements thatAddress Food InsecuritySince Parity last focused on thispertinent and pervasive issue, a raft ofactivities to combat food insecurityhave taken place at local, state andnational levels. Examples include thesuccessful local food access work led

through the Victorian LocalGovernment Association, thestate-wide leadership shown throughthe Food for all Tasmanians Strategyand the rapid development andexpansion of the food rescue anddistribution movements such asSecond Bite, Oz Harvest andFoodbank. National events havebought thought leaders and policymakers together, including the PublicHealth Association’s Future for Food,the Right to Food Coalition’sinaugural Putting Food on the TableForum, the launch of Australia’sCharitable Food Sector community ofpractice and in February this year thefocus of the Nutrition and DieteticsJournal on food insecurity.

Our Work in Food Security atAustralian Red CrossAustralian Red Cross has beenrefining and expanding food securityprograms while piloting new ideas,working closely with those directlyaffected to shape our responses.We work with isolated older people,people experiencing homelessnessand Aboriginal and Torres StraitIslander people living in remotecommunities, as well as newly arrivedmigrants and refugees.

With our partners at Sanitarium, wehave helped serve over six millionhealthy breakfasts to school childrenacross the country and are triallingstudent leadership models andintegrating food literacy sessions forstudents and parents into the primaryschool community. With the help ofALDI Australia, we’re working onstrengthening and expanding ourFoodREDi™ food literacy program.This provides people at risk of foodinsecurity the skills to choose, prepareand cook healthy meals, as well asbudgeting techniques and ways tomaintain health. Importantly, we’realso using our experience in local

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communities to inform our advocacywork in food security and partneringwith key institutions to shape thefuture of food policy.

Getting to the Determinantsof Food InsecurityThese program examples are onlya small portion of what individuals,communities and organisations aredoing to alleviate food insecurityand all efforts are commendable intheir diverse approaches toaddressing this multifactorial issue.These combined efforts have builtawareness, as well as themomentum and capacity forbroader action, and there is nodoubt they have all providedcomfort and relief to thousands ofpeople who experience hungerand homelessness across Australiaeach day.

Yet, we still have hundreds ofthousands of Australians wonderingwhere their next meal may comefrom, and many morecompromising their food choices,using emergency relief, relying onfriends and family for help, eating

less, eating poorer quality food oreating the same basic foodsrepeatedly to keep hunger at bay.

Despite the diverse andcommitted efforts of so many, theunderlying causes of foodinsecurity including low income,social isolation, inadequatehousing, poor mental health andfood access barriers persist.

Many of the program responses areunable to touch on the underlyingsystemic issues which lead people tothe circumstances where they need toaccess emergency food relief, revertto desperate measures to obtain foodor go hungry. At the same time, wesee a growing incidence of dietrelated diseases including type-twodiabetes, hypertension, heart diseaseand obesity.

Food Insecurity andDiet-related DiseasesHave the Same Root Causes:They are Socially DeterminedOne concept heralding hope is thegrowing acceptance of the socialdeterminants of health approach.

That is, recognition that theconditions in which people areborn, grow, learn, live, work andage directly impact their healthstatus and longevity. Accumulatedlifetime experiences with foodimpacted by stress, addiction,homelessness, housing, geographiclocation, transport, unemployment,mental health, early childhoodexperiences and working conditionsdetermines that people who arepoorer live shorter, less healthylives. This is unfair andunacceptable. If we consider howmany of these social issues affectAustralians experiencing long-termhomelessness, the compoundeddisadvantage and impact on healthand life circumstance is apparent.It is little wonder that it is difficultbut critical to positively impact onan issue as complex as foodinsecurity.

We know that in Australia, peopleliving in the most advantaged areaswith higher incomes are more likelyto eat a healthy balanced diet, bewithin a healthy weight range andhave better health outcomes and

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live longer.1 Conversely, and unjustly,the First Australians, minority culturalgroups, people living with disabilityand those in disadvantagedneighbourhoods on low incomes aremore likely to be food insecure,more likely to be overweight, morelikely to develop type-two diabetesand more likely to die from chronicnon-communicable diseases.2

The rate of obesity has been shownto be 20 to 40 per cent higher infood insecure individuals andpeople with the poorest social,educational and economic resourcesare at the greatest risk of obesity.3

In addition to the personal andsocietal cost of long-term poorhealth and premature death, thehealth outcomes of these come at asignificant cost to the country. In2008, the total direct and indirectcost due to overweight and obesityalone was estimated to be$58.2 billion.4 Health spending as aproportion of Gross DomesticProduct is estimated to increase by78 per cent by 2050, in part due tothe expected rise in diet-relatedchronic disease.5

The Burden of DiseaseDue to DietPoor diet has overtaken tobacco asthe leading cause of Australia’sburden of disease, yet this isentirely preventable.6 The diseaseburden is predominantly due toAustralians eating too much salty,sugary and fatty foods and too littlenutrient-dense whole foods likefruits, vegetables and wholegraincereals.7 The burden falls heavily onthose who are least able to manageor afford it.

The answer is not just in providingmore emergency food relief ormore breakfast clubs. Our foodsystem is broken, and our foodenvironment presents a majorchallenge for people to eat well. Toimpact on the incidence of foodinsecurity a holistic, cross sectorapproach is essential, includingaddressing the issue ofhomelessness and its impactsthrough increasing the provision ofaffordable housing options.

A social determinants of healthapproach suggests we cannotindividualise such a long-term andcomplex issue with individualistic

approaches alone, instead there is aneed to change environments toenable people to lead healthierlives through healthier socialconditions and easy access tohealthy food. Aggressive marketingof low cost processed food, socialnorms, healthy food availability,density of fast food outlets, foodprice, food storage and preparationfacilities all drive poor healthoutcomes for people in times ofvulnerability.

Policy Levers DemonstrateWhere and How to Act toReduce InequitiesThe research and policy work led bythe Commission on the SocialDeterminants of Health 8 hasinfluenced the recommendationsfrom the Preventative HealthTaskforce,9 VicHealth’s FairFoundations Framework,10 theINFORMAS approach 11 and TheWorld Cancer Research Fund’sNOURISHING Framework,12 all ofwhich are notable examplesproviding possible actions focussedon the creation of healthier foodenvironments. Underpinned by thesocial determinants of healthapproach, these provideevidence-based options foreffective interventions suggestingleverage points for action that maysimultaneously address some of thesocial and health related causes andconsequences of food insecurity.These policy options could bewidely adopted in an Australianfood and nutrition policy to addressfood insecurity and the resultantsocial and health consequences.

Momentum for aComprehensive National Foodand Nutrition PolicyCapitalising on the currentmomentum of the Right to Foodmovement and demonstratingleadership among developed nationswould provide a welcome change tothe health and social landscape ofour nation. A comprehensive nationalfood and nutrition policy would:

incentivise healthy food choices•

through a mix of taxes and/orsubsidiesregulate retail planning to•

restrict the density and proximityof fast food outlets while makingaccess to healthy food easiermeasure and publically report on•

food insecurity indicators

regulate unhealthy food•

marketing.

This policy would create pathwaysto healthy and affordable foodchoices for people who arehomeless and others on the lowestincomes. It would reduce chronicdisease and supportenvironmentally sustainable foodchoices ensuring future foodsecurity for all. Healthy publicpolicies are an important step inchanging the social landscape andmaking easy access to affordablehealthy food a reality for all.

Endnotes

1. VicHealth 2015, Promoting equity inhealthy eating, Victorian Health PromotionFoundation, Melbourne.

2. ibid

3. Burns C 2004, A Review of the literaturedescribing the link between poverty, foodinsecurity and obesity with specificreference to Australia, Victorian HealthPromotion Foundation.

4. Access Economics, 2008, The growing costof obesity in 2008: three years on, DiabetesAustralia, Access Economics, Canberra.

5. Productivity Commission 2010, The 2010Intergenerational Report, ProductivityCommission.

6. Department of Health 2013, Burden ofdisease: a snapshot in 2013, Department ofHealth, Queensland Government, Brisbane.

7. National Health and Medical ResearchCentre 2013, Dietary Guidelines forAustralians, Canberra.

8. Commission on Social Determinants ofHealth 2008, Closing the gap in ageneration: health equity through action onthe social determinants of health, FinalReport of the Commission on SocialDeterminants of Health, World HealthOrganisation, Geneva.

9. Preventative Health Taskforce 2008,Australia: the healthiest country by 2020:Technical Report No 1 Obesity in Australia:a need for urgent action, AustralianGovernment, Canberra.

10. Friel S, Hattersley L, Ford L and O’Rourke K2015,‘Addressing inequities in healthyeating’, Health Promotion International,vol.30, no.2 pp.77–88.

11. B. Swinburn G, Sacks S, Vandevijvere S,Kumanyika T, Lobstein B, Neal S, BarqueraS, Friel C, Hawkes B, Kelly M, L’Abbé A,Lee J, Ma J, Macmullan S, Mohan C,Monteiro M, Rayner D, Sanders W,Snowdon C, Walker and INFORMAS, 2013,‘INFORMAS (International Network forFood and Obesity/non-communicablediseases Research, Monitoring and ActionSupport): overview and key principles’,Obesity Reviews, no.14, S1 pp.1–12.

12. World Cancer Research Fund 2015,NOURISHING Framework: PolicyFramework to promote healthy diets andreduce obesity, Accessed March 1 2016http://www.wcrf.org/int/policy/nourishing-framework

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An Interview withRob Rees MBE DL

Rob Rees is one of the UnitedKingdom’s (UK) leading chefs andconsultants dedicated to creating abetter food culture for Britain andmore recently, Australia. He balanceshis work as a social entrepreneur withbeing a campaigner, demonstrator,food columnist, writer, consultantand chef.

Rebecca Lindberg interviewed him forthe special edition on food insecurityand homelessness …

The UK, like Australia, is one of thewealthiest places in the world.How many people are affected byhomelessness and food insecuritythere?

Well it depends on where you lookand who you ask. And that is one ofthe problems, actually trying tograsp a true figure. It doesn’t helpthat governments have changed anumber of policies that affect thecriteria. The last five years haveseen numbers of individuals andfamilies in need of food parcelsleap with 13 million people living inpoverty and in excess of one millionpeople using food banks. In

England, where I have done most ofmy work, in 2014, 112,330 peoplemade a homelessness application, a26 per cent rise since 2009/10.1

These figures are just the peoplewe know about.

So what are the biggest driverscausing people to face this hardshipin the UK?

The UK finally, thanks to Frank FieldMP, gathered an all parliamentarygroup to look at the state of thenation and how to feed Britain. Themain reasons that came up forthose having to use food bankswas the delay in any benefitpayments and the extra burden thisplaces upon an individual. Onceyou are in the cycle of deprivationand chaos and all that brings,trying to focus on priorities such asfood, water and clothes becomesdifficult to cope with.

The gradient of inequalities feelslike it is just getting bigger. It’simportant to say ‘feel’ and bring inan emotional state to such a globalissue. Evidence can oftencontradict matters, but more andmore communities will say thatthey are affected as pay has beenfrozen, tax credit systems changedand employability has becomeharder for those at risk.

I know of hard working familieswhere parents will be goingwithout food to provide for theirchildren. Thirty per cent of teachershave said that they also havebrought in food to give to theirpupils and we have the dichotomysimilar to the United States of thedouble burden of malnutrition andobesity. We also know that, whileschool is 190 days a year in the UK,it leaves a huge amount of holidaytime where children go hungry.2

The UK minimum wage changeslater this year which may well help,but it’s not necessarily a livingwage as calculated by the LivingWage Foundation and supportedby Joseph Rowntree Foundation.

What is making a difference topeople in the UK?

We are finally starting to seemany aspects of food povertyfocus on the quality of what isprovided. There is a movementaway from calorie dense to theutilisation of fresher, natural andmore wholesome ingredients.More sectors are working betterto minimise their food wasteissues and create good qualityfood rescue projects (wheresurplus edible food is donated byfood business to charities). Wedon’t have the Good Samaritanlaw like Australia and this hasmade the utilisation of surplusfood from the hospitality industryharder to manage.

School food in the UK has improveddramatically over recent years. ‘Let’sGet Cooking’ has over two millionparticipants in 5,500 settings and isdeveloping, amongst those takingpart, a better food culture with ahigher percentage eating healthier asa result and feeling confident to cookfrom scratch. Breakfast Clubs haveimproved their offer providing betterchoice and giving young people atrisk a better start to the day.

Importantly the UK has nowrealised you can’t talk at or to.You have to really involve acommunity in developing itsasset-based approach, seek outownership and develop solutions.This may well take longer and hasgreater risks, but can bringfantastic sustainable results.

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Can you tell ourreaders more aboutthe ‘No ChildHungry’ campaign?

Well I don’t knowabout you, but Ibelieve no childshould go hungry.We also know in lawit’s a humanitarianright and yet toomany are doing justthat — goinghungry. Wedeveloped a projectin Gloucestershire toaddress this.Gloucestershire is arural county whichto be honest hasaverage problems inthe health leaguetable. Yet nearly25 per cent of itschildren live inpoverty. One in fourare going hungryevery day and60 per cent of thoseactually had workingparents.3 Werescued freshingredients toproduce nutritionrich, tasty dishesthat were served to children andfamilies. Within time each communitytook on their own food surplusproject and teams became trained infood preparation and budgeting,alongside volunteer meal crew teams.These communities defined their ownsolution within a suite of options forthem. By doing it this way you breakthe cycle of the dependent systemuser and bring about empowerment,innovation and enterprise.

You arrived in Australia last year. Fromwhat you have seen so far, what dothe UK and Australia have in commonin terms of food insecurity and theresponse to food insecurity?

Australia has more people doingmore things. The system here on foodinsecurity seems really strained andurgent action needs to take place tointegrate the organisations better sothat more people can be helped in aneffective manner.

The common theme is a real desireby people and organisations to stop

this modern humanitarian crisis in oursociety. Government will struggle tointervene in a joined up manner. It’simportant that education, economy,health and others produce a cohesiveagreement to tackle these issues.There is a real need for someone tolead on an agreed implementationplan.

What are you excited about here inAustralia?

The scale of social enterprise here isawesome in comparison to anywhereI have seen, with a real philanthropicheart. Such social investments if usedwisely with open and transparentgovernance could bring about atipping point of change and positivedifference that could halt the growingobesity crisis, reduce those needingemergency food relief and improvechances for the most vulnerable insociety gaining meaningfulemployment.

Finally, after many years of working asa chef and food campaigner, what

three pieces of advice do you havefor people and services that arefighting against food insecurity acrossour nation?

Remember your core purpose,1.values and mission — don’t dareto mission creep.

Don’t give up on making the right2.things happen just because theyare the harder things.

However much we don’t like it, if3.you can make the Minister of themoment look good then you are inwith a chance of positive action.

Endnotes

1. Crisis, Briefing notes on facts and statisticson homelessness — England. 2015.http://www.crisis.org.uk/data/files/publications/Homelessness per cent20briefing per cent202015 per cent20EXTERNAL.pdf

2. Feeding Britain, http://feedingbritain.com/

3. The Wiggly Worm, No child hungryGloucestershire campaign, 2016.http://www.thewigglyworm.org.uk/no_child_hungry_gloucestershire.html

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Rob Rees

TThe Right to Food Coalition:From Conference to CoalitionLiza Barbour, Lecturer, Public Health Nutrition, Department of Nutrition and Dietetics,Monash University

The Right to Food (RTF) Coalitionexists to improve the health andwellbeing of all Australians byworking to ensure equitable access tonutritious food. Practitioners andresearchers have linked together toform a coalition of effort. We have aunited agenda — our vision seeseveryone in Australia with the right togood food, no matter their income,age, address or race.

The ConferenceIn late 2013, in response to reports ofrising demand for emergency foodrelief and observation of increasingproblems with food insecurity anumber of agencies andorganisations working in south westSydney came together.

It was decided to hold a conferencefor practitioners, policy makers andcommunities to highlight the issue offood insecurity, discuss the underlyingissues and to canvass solutions. Anorganising group was formed underthe title Right to Food Coalition, andin October 2014 the conference

Putting Food on the Table broughttogether over 200 delegates, many ofwhom travelled from interstate. Thekeynote speaker, Joel Berg from theNew York Coalition against Hunger,also travelled to Melbourne,Canberra, Adelaide and Perth tospeak at a series of additional events.More information and presentationsfrom the RTF conference are availablehere: www.righttofood.org.au

What started as a local initiativecontinued to gather momentum.Many conference participants werekeen to know if the RTF Coalition,originally set up to organise theconference, would continue.Participants were sent apost-conference survey seekingfeedback about priority action areas,preferred structure of an ongoingcoalition, and ideas for national andlocal organising.

There was broad support for theproposal to create a nationalRTF Coalition, with state and localchapters. Over 70 per cent of

respondents were willing to meet withothers at a state level to work on localpriorities; 61 per cent were interestedin advocacy.

The CoalitionDuring 2015, a structure wasestablished whereby a National Rightto Food Coalition comprisingrepresentatives from a number ofstate RTF ‘chapters’ meets viateleconference every couple ofmonths. To date there are chapters inNSW, Victoria/Tasmania and SouthAustralia. We also have individualparticipation from Queensland andWestern Australia. The full terms ofreference for the National Coalitioncan be viewed on the website.

The Right to Food Coalition has fourkey action areas:

Collaborate across Australia to1.support collective advocacy effortsto address the key determinants ofnutritious food access

Promote collaboration across2.Australia’s food security workforceto maximise collective impact

Identify areas for policy-relevant3.research to enable evidenceinformed decision making andpolicy development; scrutinisepublic policy and identify areas foraction

Equip partners to strengthen their4.advocacy in their own spheres

The Right to Food Coalition will beofficially launched in April 2016. If youare interested in joining us to eithercontribute to an existing chapter,establishing a chapter in WA, NT,ACT or QLD or joining the NationalRTF group, please contact us atrighttofoodcoalition@gmail.comKeynote speakers from Putting Food on the Table

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The Human Right to FoodNick Rose, Sustain: The Australian Food Network, William Angliss, Rebecca Lindberg, The Australian Health Policy Collaboration, Victoria University and Martin Caraher, Centre for Food Policy, City University London

IntroductionThe idea of universal human rights isa powerful one. Every person,wherever they are born andregardless of their social status, isentitled to the enjoyment of certaininalienable basic rights. Human rightsare indivisible: the denial of one rightaffects the enjoyment of others;hence the intrinsic link between thebasic rights to housing, food, andhealth.

These fundamental rights were for thefirst time enshrined in the historicUniversal Declaration of HumanRights (UDHR), proclaimed in Paris onthe 10th of December, 1948.Australia, largely due to theoutstanding efforts of Dr. Herbert(Doc) Evatt, was one of eight nationsinvolved in drafting the UDHR.

The UDHR is not legally binding.It sets out basic norms and standardsto which all countries are expected toadhere. It has been followed byseveral international legal instrumentsthat are legally binding; in particular,the 1966 International Covenant onEconomic, Social and Cultural Rights(ICESCR), and the 1989 Conventionon the Rights of the Child. Bothexplicitly name adequate food andhousing as basic human rights. Article11 of the ICESCR states that:

‘The States Parties to the presentCovenant recognize the right ofeveryone to an adequate standardof living for himself and his family,including adequate food, clothingand housing, and to thecontinuous improvement of livingconditions’

In the modern global economy suchrights are often seen as ‘barriers totrade’; and the assumption is that thefood industry, via ‘normal marketoperations’, will provide affordableand adequate food for all. For somedecades, this has been thephilosophical and political position ofAustralian governments. However, thefood industry’s role is to maximizeprofit and provide a service tocustomers, and herein lies a crucialdistinction: consumer choice versusthe rights of citizens.

The Role of Nation StatesAccording to international law, allState parties to the ICESCR areobliged to ‘respect, protect and fulfill’the rights which it establishes. Whilesecuring the full enjoyment of theuniversal right to food is understood

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to take place over time (the principleof ‘progressive realisation’), Article 11,Part 2, says that everyone within aState’s territory must be free fromhunger now, and that a State violatesthis obligation unless it has insufficientresources to fulfill its duties.

The duty to respect the right to foodis essentially a negative obligation:States must not do anything thatwould prevent citizens and residentsfrom accessing food. An example ofthis is states creating deliberatestarvation through blockades in atime of war — as is tragicallyoccurring in Syria right now.

The duty to protect the right to foodmeans that States must takemeasures to prevent third parties,including private businesses, fromdoing anything that would depriveindividuals from accessing affordable,adequate and appropriate food on anon-going basis. This could include thedevelopment of a ‘food desert’through so-called ‘land-banking’whereby households are excludedfrom access to healthy food outlets.

Finally, the duty to fulfill is a positiveobligation, which requires states to‘establish political, economic andsocial systems that provide accessto the guaranteed right for allmembers of society’.1 This includesensuring the affordability and safetyof culturally appropriate staplefoods, the protection of resourcesfor food production and theprovision of emergency food relief.Food polices which link health andecological-sustainability are seen assetting the international benchmarkregarding the duty to fulfill the rightto food.

Since 2002, the office of the UnitedNations Special Rapporteur on theRight to Food 2 has mapped out bestpractice for all countries on the legaland institutional steps to fullyimplement the right to food.Read together with the Food andAgriculture’s Organisation’sVoluntary Guidelines 3 the key stepsare as follows:

incorporating the right to food in•

national constitutionspassing enabling domestic•

legislation: a ‘national Right toFood framework law’identifying and targeting the•

hungry and the poor

conducting a thorough assessment•

of existing policies, institutionsand lawsdeveloping participatory ‘national•

strategies based upon the right tofood’, such as national agriculture,food security and nutritionstrategiesdesigning and resourcing•

appropriate institutions andimplementing actions of aparticipatory naturemonitoring the implementation of•

the national strategiesenforcing the right to food•

through judicial means wherenecessary.

As of 2011, 23 countries had explicitlyincorporated the right to food in theirConstitutions, and another33 recognised the right to foodimplicitly as part of broader humanrights guarantees.4 A further 19 hadadopted or were drafting a frameworklaw to implement the Constitutionalright to food; several had adoptednational food and nutrition strategies,and established institutions chargedwith their oversight.4 In somecountries the right to food has beenlegally enforced through the courts,providing citizens an opportunity tohold their governments to account.

Human Rights in AustraliaAustralia is not amongst any of thesecountries. Australia, at the Federallevel, does not have a Bill of Rights,or a Human Rights Act. As noted,Australian governments take the viewthat economic and social rightsshould be satisfied by individualsselling their labour in themarketplace, and buying access tofood and housing. This is essentially aneoliberal model of rights andobligations, according to which basicnecessities are regarded ascommodities, and access to them canbe achieved by a successfullyperforming economy.

Following the ‘golden era’ ofpost-war growth from 1950–1975,times have changed drastically; andincreasing numbers of Australians areliving precariously, either in or on theedge of both food insecurity andhomelessness. Now there is a newgroup of food insecure: the workingpoor, those who are massively overmortgaged and who survive from paycheck to pay check. From research weknow that such groups cut down on

healthy food in the family budget as itcan be squeezed, unlike other fixeditems of household expenditure.

In a wealthy country like Australia, thissituation has structural roots in theongoing dismantling of the welfaresafety net, the increase in low-paidand precarious employment, and theassociated steep rise in incomepoverty and income inequality.Fundamentally, as Silvasti and Richesconclude following their survey of thealarming rise in food insecurity in richcountries in the past 30 years: ‘…anend to hunger [and homelessness]requires living wages, adequatebenefits and full employment’.5

All countries must make periodicreports to the United Nations (UN) ontheir progress to meeting their humanrights obligations. As regards to theright to food, Australia’s most recentreport in 2006, contained a singlebrief paragraph on the developmentof Eat Well Australia, a public healthnutrition plan.6 Meanwhile,non-government organisations haveprovided shadow reports to the UNdetailing Australia’s government’sfailure to tackle food insecurity andfulfil basic food rights.7

A health education approach tostructural problems within the foodsystem ignores agriculture,processing, marketing and retail.A truly comprehensive food policywould address the rights of farmersas the primary producers of thenation’s food supply, and ensurethat the food produced was linkedto a national nutrition strategy. Yetboth the 2013 National Food Plan(NFP) and the current AgriculturalCompetitiveness White Paper(ACWP) fail to make any suchconnections, focusing largely orentirely on increasing theproduction of food as commoditiesfor profit and export.

Improving RightsAs a rich country that exportstwo-thirds of the food we produce,and will spend $1 trillion on militaryforces over the next two decades, thenotion that we ‘don’t have thefinancial means’ to eradicate hungerand homelessness is absurd.

Arguments abound over food wasteand the way that this can be used tofeed the ‘hungry’, but within a rights

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framework this ignores the issues ofadequate, appropriate and healthyfood; and citizens’ rights to accessfood in a dignified manner.7

The provision of food through charityand left-overs from a dysfunctionalfood system does not equate tofulfilling the right to food for allpeople in Australia.

How we raise taxes, and how wespend them, as well as how we offeremergency relief, are questions ofpolitical will; and the resulting‘solutions’, say a great deal about thenature of our basic values, the level ofunderstanding about the devastatingconsequences of inequality inAustralia, and our level of compassionas a people.

The good news is that manyconscientious individuals, organisationsand institutions do take our obligationsseriously, and are seeking to improvehuman rights in Australia.

At the local governmental level, manyCouncils are taking the lead by theparticipatory development andimplementation of holistic foodsystem policies. Many of theseexplicitly acknowledge the humanright to adequate food, and theCouncil’s responsibility to do what itcan to guarantee this right.These activities build on years ofgrassroots work, which is now leadingto the participatory development ofmulti-functional community foodhubs, which can transform the modelof food charity to one ofempowerment and focus on systemiccauses of disadvantage.

Non-government organisations,including the Council to HomelessPersons, have persistently raisedawareness about welfare, social andhealth injustices, urged foraccountability and brokeredpartnerships for improved services forvulnerable Australians. Human rights

principles, such as participation andnon-discrimination, does and shouldcontinue to influence this work.

National networks such as the Right toFood Coalition and Sustain: TheAustralian Food Network, are bringingtogether research and practicepartnerships to bring attention to thisissue in a sustained way. Shadowreporting to the UN and inviting theUN Special Rapporteur on the Rightto Food to visit Australia, may offer anunder-utilised opportunity to tacklehomelessness and food insecurity. Indoing this it is important to provide avoice and platform for marginalisedand hidden groups. It is not enoughfor advocates to talk on their behalf.

The human right to food, and theprecedents for its successfulimplementation in dozens of countriesaround the world, is a powerful meansby which to achieve the goal of a trulyfair and just Australia, in whicheveryone is well housed and everyoneenjoys nourishing food every day.It’s up to us to make this a reality.We can begin by reflecting humanrights in how we deliver services, setpolicies and hold Australiangovernments to account.

Endnotes

1. Committee on Economic, Social andCultural Rights 1999, General Comment12, The Right to Adequate Food, availableat http://tbinternet.ohchr.org

2. De Schutter O 2010, Countries TacklingHunger with a Right to Food Approach:Significant Progress in Implementing theRight to Food at National Scale in Africa,Latin America and South Asia, BriefingNote 1, May 2010.

3. Food and Agricultural Organisation 2004,Voluntary Guidelines to Support theProgressive Realization of the Right toAdequate Food in the Context of NationalFood Security.

4. Knuth L and Vidar M 2011, Constitutionaland Legal Protection of the Right to Foodaround the World.

5. Silvasti T and Riches G 2014, Hunger andFood Charity in Rich Societies: What Hopefor the Right to Food? In First WorldHunger Revisited, Palgrave Macmillan,United Kingdom (UK), pp. 191–208.

6. Commonwealth of Australia 2006,Common Core Document forming part ofthe reports of States Parties — Australia —incorporating the Fifth Report under theInternational Covenant on Civil andPolitical Rights and the Fourth Reportunder the International Covenant onEconomic, Social and Cultural Rights. p.136

7. Booth S 2014, Foodbanks in Australia:Discouraging the Right to Food. In Riches,G and Silvasti T 2014, First World HungerRevisited, Palgrave Macmillan UK.

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Food Alone WillNot End HungerRussell Shields, Churchill Fellow, Food Justice Truck Manager, Asylum Seeker Resource Centre and Founder and Chair of The Community Grocer

To put ourselves out of business —the line I used repeatedly as afounding staff member of foodrescue organisation SecondBite.I loved it, lived it, and fought for it.We should not be throwing awayover $8 billion dollars’ worth of foodevery year and we certainly shouldnot have people lining up for foodrelief in the lucky country.

It was this type of injustice, hungeramongst plenty, which lead me totake a role in the community foodsector back in 2006. The sector wasrelatively small, the challenge washuge, and the potential for impactseemed obvious. I enjoyed this workand was humbled to work amongstbusiness, community and governmentto tackle food waste and foodinsecurity for nigh on a decade.

As the organisation grew rapidly, so theproblem we were charged withaddressing seemed to as well. Seeingfirsthand the multiple effects of risingfood insecurity on our most vulnerableand the resultant challenges on thestaff and volunteers working to improveit, coupled with the ever increasingdemand for significant philanthropicinvestment, I began to wonder…are we heading in the right direction?

In mid-2015, in an attempt to answerthat question, I went on a ChurchillFellowship to the United Kingdom

(UK), the United States (US) andCanada to see the impact foodrescue and community food initiativeswere having on addressing foodsecurity for vulnerable populations,and came back with some key lessonsfor Australia.

1. Charities are not the solutionto food insecurity

The charitable sector across thedeveloped world is bursting at theseams, and no amount of food banksor volunteer driven communitygoodwill seems to be addressing theproblem of hunger.

All the available evidence from30-plus years of formal food bankingand food rescue across the UK, USand Canada tells us the solution tohunger does not lie in surplus foodwarehousing and redistribution.

Whilst the embodiment ofcompassion, the caring nature thatjust wants to put food on hungryplates, we need to ask what does thefood future we want to live in looklike, and what role, if any, doesemergency food relief and thecharitable food sector play. How dowe, in a country that producesenough food to feed over 60 millionpeople, adequately ensure that thethird of that amount that is requiredto feed us all, is ending up on everyperson’s plate?

As the food banking sector of the US,Canada and the UK has grown into anindustry, somewhat stratospherically,not dissimilar to the food bankingsector here in Australia since 2005,the problems of food insecurity andhunger have risen concurrently. So ifthe goal is to ‘end hunger’, thenclearly it is not working. If the goal isto redistribute surplus food, then wehave a great success.

Some argue that food rescueorganisations ‘that obtain nutritiousfood, can offer a practical way tomake public health gains and changethe culture of providing non-nutritiousfood in the emergency space’.1

However, it has also been argued thatfood rescue may pose a threat topublic health and client wellbeing andthat the ‘sector inadvertentlycontributes to poorer outcomes forpeople in poverty by reducing theirhuman right to food’.2

There is also the well versed critiqueof the nutritional quality of foodbanking and food rescue, with themajor proportion of non-perishable,barcode laden and subsequentlynutrient lacking foods. This view issummed up best by New Yorkresearcher Janet Poppendieck’s 1999critique of the sector which certainlypulls no punches, and is as relevanttoday as it was then.

Despite this critical evidence overmany years the emergency food sectoris growing, quickly, in Australia. If thefood warehouse and redistributionrescue sector is to play a role, it mustbe one focussed on collaboration,dignity and nutrition. The SecondBiteCommitment to Nutritious FoodRescue is an example of a positivedirection where organisational KPIs arefocussed on what type of food ismoved, not how much of it. When weas a community are relied on to makeImage supplied by Vinnies Food Vans

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the dietary choice for people in need,surely we have a duty to provide ahealthy option.

2. We are letting our politiciansoff the hook

Similar to many other high-incomecountries, Australia has a growing notfor profit sector and a shrinking role forgovernment in welfare and socialservices and while the food bankindustry remains the dominant solutionto food poverty in Australia, debatewill be deflected from the underlyingstructural causes of hunger.

A recent Australian paper 4 notes thatthe issue of food banks is framed asone of food re-distribution andfeeding hungry people. It argues‘food banks continue as a neo-liberalmechanism to deflect query, debateand structural action on food povertyand hunger. Consequently theirexistence does little to ameliorate theproblem of food poverty’. This alignswith Poppendieck from 1999, whoconcludes ‘there is damage to dignityby receiving food charity; the systemerodes the State’s responsibility toensure adequate living standards forcitizens’.3

Internationally the UN SpecialRapporteur on the Right to Food,Olivier de Schutter more recentlycommented that ‘the growth of foodbanks in wealthy countries is a salientmarker of social policy failure (withrespect to hunger) and failure ofgovernment to meet its right to foodobligations’.5

3. Count it to make it countDe Schutter also asserts that ‘… foodbanks (are) in a unique position toadopt novel rights-based approachesand lobby government withincreasing vigour to address the rootcauses of hunger. Such advocacycould revert food banks to a moreagreeable position — not as a long-term industry but as an emergencyresponse to short-term hunger’.Food charities in Australia havestarted to produce reports on who ishungry and what drives people to usetheir services and this must continue.

When the Chamberlain andMacKenzie homelessness reportingsystem was added to the AustralianBureau of Statistics (ABS) census, therelevant sector received governmentfocus and investment, and rightly so.

Imagine if we had a commitment forregular reporting structures andcomprehensive measures ofhousehold food security included inthe ABS census or national healthsurveys in the same wayhomelessness was. We could thenunderstand the problem in moredetail, target our response moreeffectively, and have a policy platformfrom which to campaign for thehidden issue of hunger. The currentout of mind, out of sight strategymust be altered if we are to seechange on this issue.

4. Focus on poverty,not on hunger

Food alone will not end hunger, andit will certainly not end homelessness.Hunger and food insecurity are thedirect result of poverty, empty walletsand empty stomachs. This statementmay subsequently imply the simpleway to address food insecurity is tosimply address poverty. We know it isfar more complex than that, but withmoney the driving factor in foodchoices, higher welfare payments,increased wages and employmentopportunities will go a long way toredress the rising need.

In Washington the DC CentralKitchen, along with The Stop inToronto and the indefatigable JoelBerg from Hunger Free America inNew York C, all state that ‘food willnot cure hunger’, a seeminglyincongruous statement, yet one thatwas a consistent theme across themajority of organisations I visited.Nick Saul from Community FoodCentres in Toronto, and good foodpioneer, describes himself as an anti-poverty campaigner, not anti-hunger.

5. CollaborationIn a community sector fighting for thesame food and for the same funders,collaboration is not often easy andtoo many times we are foundknocking on the same doors with thesame ask.

Both overseas and here in Australia alack of collaboration is not justobvious but has diminished thepotential impact across communities.If we all want to end hunger, fightfood insecurity and reduce waste,then we must learn to work morecohesively. Drop the competition,leave the ego at the door and unite.Together we can be much stronger.

6. Provide opportunities forpeople to share their story

What is also evidently lacking in thepolicy campaigns, both here in Australiaand overseas, is the absent voice of theend user, the people we exist to serve.

The sullen face of a well-lit child,picked and paid for from the worldwide web of image misery, expellingthe obvious effects of hunger, povertyand bad luck, may be a goodstrategic fundraising move by themarketing gurus of the social sector,as the repetitive use alludes to, butsurely the real way to make change isfor the people living the lives we wantto improve having a real voice in themainstream media, policy andadvocacy debate. The least we cando is show their strength andresilience through positive imagesthat truly reflect the hope andopportunity they embody.

When it comes to mealtime at thepolicy, strategy and developmenttable, the people we exist to serveare lacking seats, and it seems thedoor to access the dining room is welland truly closed.

We can learn a lot from those who havegone before us in similar settingsoverseas. Are we able to work togethermore collaboratively as a sector,connect in a united voice with anevidence-based and lived experienceinformed strategy alongside the peoplewe exist to serve, to improve foodsecurity for all Australians? Soundsgood to me. I’m in.

Endnotes

1. Lindberg R, Lawrence M, Gold L, Friel S2014, ‘Food rescue — an Australianexample’, British Food Journal, vol.116,no.9, pp.1478–1489

2. Riches G 1997, First World Hunger: FoodSecurity and Welfare Politics, MacMillan,Basingstoke.

3. Poppendieck J 1999, Sweet Charity?Emergency Food and the End ofEntitlement, Penguin, Harmondsworth, England.

4. Booth S, Whelan J 2014, ‘Hungry for change:the food banking industry in Australia’,British Food Journal, vol. 116, no. 9,pp.1392–1404

5. De Schutter O 2012, Report of the specialrapporteur on the right to food on hismission to Canada (6 to 16 May 2012),available at: www.ohchr.org/Documents/HRBodies/HRCouncil/RegularSession/Session22/AHRC2250Add.1_English.PDF(accessed 22 March 2013).

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Chapter 2: Consumer and Client Perspectives:The Experience of Food Insecurity

Six Mouths to FeedHaley Price, Marketing and Communications Manager, St Vincent de Paul Society Victoria

This is Gill’s story. She receivesassistance from the Vinnies SoupVan and wanted to share her storyin the hope that people willunderstand why she is caught inthe poverty cycle.

It’s Monday morning. Gill* is tearingaround the front yard winding upthe hose.

‘So sorry, I’ll just be a minute!’

This is her world — a world whereevery single minute counts. Gill is asingle mother of six kids aged nineto 21 years and an expert at copingin varying waves of chaos.

‘I’ve spent some time in a refuge,which provided one bedroom forfive children and no cot for mybaby. I’d never do it again —I was really desperate,’ she says.

These days she lives in athree-bedroom home with her fiveboys and one girl, which she waslucky to secure through publichousing 13 years ago. She’s beenon the waiting list for a larger homefor over ten years, with limitedalternative options to explore.

‘Private renters don’t like peoplelike me, with lots of kids. I’ve neverhad my own room — I still sharewith my daughter. I don’t knowwhat it’s like to have my own space.’

But she says a lack of space is a smallprice to pay for keeping her kids.

‘I’ve never put my children in[government] care, I don’t believe incare, but it’s been very, very hard.’

She’s even opened her doors toothers in need, her kids’ friends,often caught in the throes of thefoster system or family conflict.

‘I haven’t been a foster parent, butI’ve had a lot of children come and goover the years — they used to eat andsleep at my house. I refuse to throw a

kid out on the street just becausethey’re having problems with theirfamily. Some of these kids were veryyoung, early high school,’ she says.

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During this time, the Vinnies SoupVan volunteers would often offer ahand up and her only avenue forfeeding everyone under her roof.

‘I used to try to do it all on myown, but then the Soup Vancame. We got extra sandwiches,which is what these kids wereeating for dinner.’

With six young mouths to feedGill has become extremelyresourceful with how she providesfood for her family. Hunting downgrocery specials and vouchers hasbecome a special skill and is partof her daily routine.

‘I usually shop at Coles andSafeway, but I also go to Aldi, themarkets, or anywhere I can get aspecial. I don’t do big shopsanymore, I get the basics, buteven milk costs me an arm and aleg. I can go through six litres inless than two days in myhousehold, but I can’t tell my kidsnot to drink milk or not to eatbread,’ she says.

Despite the cost, Gill ensuresthere is always something in thecupboard to eat.

‘We don’t have chocolate, chips orlollies. If the kids look in the

cupboard or fridge there’s crackers,cheese, and fruit. The basics.’

Meal times usually include a heartyserve of filler food, purchased withwhatever source of income orgoodwill she can find week byweek. Pancakes, eggs on toastand cheap cuts of meat areregulars on the menu.

‘If we eat meat it’s usually becauseI’ve got a voucher. I make a lot ofspaghetti bolognaise and lasagnefrom mince. But things like roastchicken are very rare — it takestwo or three chickens to feed myfamily,’ she says.

Kids are Gill’s life. She has verylittle contact with her own friendsand family and often feels isolatedwithin the community.

‘I have medical issues — I sufferfrom anxiety and depression.I’ve been on medication and havebeen hospitalised,’ she says.

It’s made the prospect ofobtaining paid work problematic.She worked as an officeadministrator before she becamea mother, but is now competingagainst people half her age whohave greater flexibility with theirtime.

‘My skills mean nothing anymore— I don’t have any courses up mysleeve or qualifications. There’snot much out there for me,’she says.

Even so, Gill is proud to be feelingstronger and determined to puther best foot forward.

‘I don’t have anything brand new.Everything is second hand, fromthe side of the road or donated —but you wouldn’t even know.We don’t wear holey clothes orholey shoes, I just won’t allowthat,’ she says.

The Vinnies Soup Van still comeson Tuesdays, Thursdays andSaturdays to help her along too.

‘If I didn’t have the Soup Van,I’d be worse off than I am now.’

* The true name and identity of the personfeatured in this story have been suppressedfor privacy and safety reasons.

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Food Insecurityand HomelessnessLisa Peterson, Peer Education Support Program Graduate

I have said many times how ‘lucky’I was in my homelessness — I wasonly in homeless crisis for sevenmonths in 2011. I never had to sleeprough. I never had to sleep in arooming house of any description(good, bad or horrific). The placesI stayed were hygienic and I never feltmy personal safety was at risk as aresult of where I had to sleep. I washoused in transitional housing with afairy Godmother support workerwithout ever filling in an applicationform and ended up in quality publichousing. Retrospectively, it was apretty easy journey with relativelyminor trauma inflicted, comparedwith the horror stories I hear from mypeers. While I have been diagnosedwith Post Traumatic Stress Disorder,most of the trauma I associate withhomelessness is pretty much undercontrol. There is, however, one areathat is an exception, and that is therelationship I have with food.In 2013 I was diagnosed as havinganorexia, an illness that is debilitatingand in my case, a direct result ofhomelessness.

In 2011, when I experiencedhomelessness I didn’t know what Iknow now. I didn’t know about thefood vans that operate. I didn’t knowabout food banks. I had no ideaabout services that provided meals.I didn’t know how to go aboutfeeding myself without an income ormagic Health Care Card. In all reality,even had I known, I probably stillwould not have gone to theseservices because I was living in a stateof paranoia, and walking into a roomof mostly men was not somethingI was comfortable doing in that state.

I had a period of about six weekswhere my only sustenance was tea,coffee and a one dollar bag ofDoritos that I managed to make lastfive days at a time. I was showing up

to services with no fuel in my tank, yetexpected to be clear thinking andrational. Nobody thought to ask whenwas the last time I ate — it made lifealmost impossible. I was attemptingto make life decisions with no sugar inmy blood and an incredibly lighthead. At the time, I didn’t know I hadoptions because nobody told me.I didn’t like feeling hungry, yet therewas nothing I could do about it.Somehow the messages between mystomach and brain stopped working.To this day that connection is still notback fully. By the time ‘Nostart’ kickedin I had lost all comprehension of theconcept of eating. The first threenights I spent couch surfing left mebewildered when my friends handedme dinner, but at the end of my fiveweeks with them I was eating withthem despite the hunger messagesnot coming through. I’d lost almost30kgs by that point. Then I foundservices providing ‘food’ and thingswent from bad to worse.

To this day I still cannot comprehendwhat the services I used were thinkingwhen it came to food provision.What we were served was not food.My first meal in the shelter was adinner we called ‘curry surprise’because we would all be surprised ifwe ever found out what it was.Then there was the meal we called‘spewna mornay’, a meal that stilltraumatises those of us who had itslopped in front of us. That was thenight I decided beggars could bechoosers and a friend and I went totasting night at the market.

I had to sign away so many rights tokeep a roof over my head in thatrefuge. One of their very fewobligations was to provide threenutritious meals a day and that was anobligation they did not live up to.By the time I left, food was not even athought; I was over it.

My personal experience of foodbanks has been very limited —I have chosen starvation over whatthey tried to convince me was food.As a consumer participant and peersupport worker, what I have seen asbeing touted as food for peopleexperiencing homelessness hasfinished the job of completely turningme off food. So, even when themessage gets through, that I am

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hungry — I cannot eat it, and I amnot the only one. I can go spark up aconversation with a peer about foodthat is currently being served andnine times out of ten will hearnegative comments. This situation isnot necessary.

This is Australia. We produce some ofthe best quality food in the world andwe produce a lot of it, but it seemsquality food is not for peopleexperiencing homelessness; we haveto survive on what is dished up to usand we are expected to be grateful.The thing I find ridiculous about it isthat it is us and frontline workers whosuffer. How can a person be expectedto behave appropriately and berational when their body is beingfuelled by nothing or rubbish?Why do we get blamed formisbehaviour when we are not theones who control our nutritionalintake? Why should frontline workers

have to put up with our behaviourcaused by malnutrition?

I have advocated several times forALL services to provide consumerswith access to healthy food options inwaiting rooms. Sometimes, we can besitting waiting for hours and it mayhave been days since we have eaten.By providing us with somethinghealthy to eat while we wait,consumers may have some sugar intheir blood by the time they see aworker and may be slightly easier todeal with. I also advocate for all foodto be recognisable and identifiable;if you would not put it in your mouthand swallow it — don’t give it to us.Provide women only spaces —we impose enough eating problemson ourselves, we don’t need anymore excuses to develop eatingdisorders and having to sitdefensively in a room full of men isnot good for our eating habits.

Feeding us properly is not difficult;it just takes some thought. Eatingdisorders on the other hand areincredibly difficult. They are costly tothe individual and to society.They are also one more problem thatpeople who are homeless do notneed to be concerning themselveswith — we have enough going on.So please, ask your consumers whenthey last ate. If you operate a servicethat does not currently provide food,provide it, and if you operate aservice that does serve food, engagepeer support workers to speak toyour consumers and find out whetheryou are doing as good a job as youthink you are or whether you arecausing bigger problems than alreadyexist. If you find you are gettingnegative feedback, please fix it for allour sake. Anorexia is an awful dailystruggle; don’t make your lives harderby setting up the conditions for us todevelop it.

Image supplied by Vinnies Food Vans

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Consumer VoicesResponding to Food Insecurity and HomelessnessConsumer Voices is a regular feature in Parity. Articles are written by and with consumers to ensurethey have a say about the issues that directly affect them.

The Peer Education and SupportProgram (PESP) is the consumerparticipation program at theCouncil to Homeless Persons (CHP)in Victoria. PESP is a diverse groupof people who have experiencedhomelessness who are trained andsupported to undertake a range ofactivities to improve the responseto homelessness, educate and raiseawareness about homelessness andpromote consumer input intohomelessness policy and servicedesign and delivery.

IntroductionAll members of the PESP team haveexperienced issues with foodinsecurity. The group came togetherto discuss what those issues were, thecontext around the development ofthose issues, service responses tofood insecurity and what they wouldlike to see change in order to addressfood insecurity.

Personal Experiencesof Food Insecurity

TrevorHealth issues, a death in the familyand a disagreement with thelandlord led Trevor to close hisbusiness and ‘go bush’. Trevor washomeless, surviving in the bush on$38 a fortnight over eightfortnights. Trevor survived by livingoff the land. He had norefrigeration, so had to eat anythinghe caught.

KarunaGovernment changes to the SoleParent Pension mean that when achild turns eight, the parent ismoved to the Newstart payment.Through the Newstart benefit,single parents with one childreceive only $21.45 more per weekthan single people without adependent child on Newstart.

This creates many challenges forKaruna who is a sole carer of a childwith a disability, who is also livingwith her own disability. She doesnot receive child support as itbecame too difficult to collect, dueto further risk of violence and abuseof an offender (assessed byCentrelink) and can only earn about$60 per week before her Newstartpayment starts to get cut. Karunalives in public housing, so if sheearns any more her rent increases.These circumstances createunnecessary stress for Karuna andher child, making studying atuniversity, working and raising herchild very challenging at times.

All of these factors result in a cycleof poverty for Karuna and her son.Fresh, healthy food costs more thanjunk food, putting extra strain on analready tight budget.

SuzanneWhen Suzanne became homeless,she stayed in crisis accommodation,which was when food insecurity wasat its worst for her. She was under agreat deal of stress and would justeat anything. Suzanne resorted toeating frozen meals because theywere cheap and the crisis centreoffered them three days a week.

JohnEight years ago John was workingas a furniture removalist. When thetruck motor blew up and hecouldn’t afford to fix it, he becamehomeless and ended up living in it.Each morning John went to the citybut could not access any assistancebecause he was out of hiscatchment area.

JasonTwenty years ago when Jason was afirefighter he had a nervousbreakdown and had to leave the

job. He became a truck driverinstead but soon found himself withan addiction to ice, leading to theloss of his job and his family and thebeginning of his homelessness.

JodyWhen Jody and her daughter wentto stay in crisis accommodation, shefound there were no cookingfacilities and only a bar fridge. Theeffect of this was she had to shopdaily for food. Jody suffers from awide range of allergies, mentalillness and physical disability,making daily shopping and accessto appropriate food responses verydifficult. Jody also had competingpriorities with medicalappointments. Frozen meals werethe only option at times.

The Service ResponsePESP went on to discuss theresponses to food insecurity byservices. The issues individual PESPmembers encountered in serviceprovision related to the followingthemes.

AccessFood vouchers cannot be accessedregularly or as needed. Otherbarriers to access includeprioritisation processes. Some PESPmembers discussed the difficultythey experienced accessingvouchers when not living in crisisaccommodation. Some servicesrequired evidence of health issuesfrom specialists, which requiresappointments which cost money,making accessing food assistanceextremely difficult.

At many services young peoplecannot access assistance whenparents are earning a high incomeor without parental consent, whichis problematic if the young personexperiences violence in the home.

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Several PESP members hadexperience of a food service notturning up when they were supposedto, which meant they were unable toaccess food at those times.

PESP also discussed the access toinformation and assistance regardingfood services. Some people were notasked if they needed assistance withfood when they were at intake andassessment, so they did not knowabout their options. Other peopletalked about finding out throughothers who were experiencinghomelessness, which took some time.PESP members who were further outfrom the city said there were very fewfood services, which led to themcoming to the city for access.

Every time consumers access aservice they are required to telltheir story. This can also be abarrier to access.

DiscriminationPeople who presented beingaccused of not needing the foodservices and being treateddisrespectfully.

Dietary and Health IssuesPeople who have specific dietaryneeds because of health issues orthose who have allergies find itdifficult to find food services whichmeet their needs. Some servicesprovide only unhealthy options;which clearly does not meet thedietary needs of anyone.

These issues result in stress, whichinflames health issues.

CostHealthy food is more expensive, yetfood vouchers are only for smallamounts, such as $30 for a coupleof months, which doesn’t go far,especially if you have a child.

One PESP member commentedthat he was not impressed with ameal service which charges peoplefor a meal.

Service DeliveryServices require consumers to fit tothem; they do not develop creative,appropriate solutions for peoplewith a disability.

Food hampers were an option atsome services but these are not

helpful for people staying inaccommodation without cookingfacilities.

BenefitsMeal services can play an importantrole in social interaction, whichpeople may not otherwise have.This was valued by some PESPmembers.

Several PESP members were veryimpressed with the food servicesand their response. One personparticularly appreciated havingsomewhere to go for Xmas lunchand others pointed out the valuablerole they play in social interactionfor people experiencinghomelessness, who may havelimited social interaction otherwise.

Food services which rescue foodleftover from markets and use it tocook vegan meals and provide freshfruit and vegetables for people totake home with them wereconsidered valuable and do notrequire consumers to tell their story,which is highly appreciated.

SolutionsPESP members provided their ideasfor addressing the issue of foodinsecurity. They each came up witha range of ideas, which can againbe arranged under themes.

Accessincrease meal services on•

weekends, nights and holidaysincrease rural access to food•

servicesprovide active referrals to food•

services from intake andassessmentprovide more independent•

services, which are not linked tochurch or governmentat initial intake provide people•

with a list of services in the areaincrease funding for food•

vouchers and improve access tothese for people who needthem. Look into the barriers toaccess and work to addressthem, with input fromconsumers.

Service Delivery andSystem Improvement

Explore a better method of•

information sharing betweensupport services, whichupholds privacy laws and

respects peoples’ right toconfidentiality. For years nowconsumers have flagged theissue of having to re-tell theirstory, yet it still has not beenaddressed sufficiently.Successful meal planning when•

experiencing homelessnessonly works when a person has acombination of financial abilityto purchase food, appropriatehome storage, ability toprepare meals, cookingfacilities and personal mobility.All of these must be consideredby services who respond tofood insecurity and systemswhich work to prevent it.Offer the option of information•

about how to cook healthymeals on a low income.Access point services should•

provide food for consumerswho are there over meal timesand miss out on accessing ameal service.Provide sector training in the•

links between institutionalabuse and food insecurity andalternative service responses.

Government Policydo not force people onto a•

cashless welfare cardservices and government•

should be willing to look at theinstitutional problems whichlead to food insecurity; taxpeople at the top of theincome ladder before cuttingback Centrelink benefitsinitiate a government inquiry•

into charges by utilitycompaniesgovernment should address the•

high cost of living, especiallythe cost of housingincrease job security.•

ConclusionPoverty, homelessness and foodinsecurity are closely connected. Assuggested by PESP, if we are toaddress food insecurity we need toinvestigate the structural causes,the barriers to accessing a serviceresponse and an improvement inthe types of services offered, wherethey are located and how they aredelivered. If we are genuine in ourintention to get it right, we must beworking alongside people with alived experience of food insecurityto intervene early and designappropriate responses.

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What is the Meaning of Foodfor Young PeopleExperiencing Homelessness?Rowena Yamazaki, Community Nutritionist, Community Health Services, Denise Fry, Evaluation Officer, Community Health Services, Sydney Local Health District and Jessica Fielding, Policy Officer, Yfoundations

Yfoundations, the New South Walespeak agency supporting young peopleat risk of or experiencing homelessnessadvocates for the positivedevelopment of young people andpromotes their rights.1 Access to foodis a fundamental part of these rights.2

Yet in Australia, some young people,especially those who are experiencingor at risk of homelessness, don’t haveenough to eat.

According to the Food andAgricultural Organisation (FAO) of theUnited Nations, food insecurity is theterm used to describe ‘limited oruncertain availability of nutritionallyadequate and safe food, or limitedand uncertain ability to acquire foodin socially acceptable ways’. Foodinsecurity in Australia occurs morefrequently than most people thinkand is higher among young people.For example:

Five per cent of the Australian•

population is estimated to be foodinsecure.3

The prevalence is higher amongst•

certain groups including youngpeople (15 per cent).4

In 2013, 14 per cent of children in•

New South Wales went to schoolwithout breakfast.5

Almost one in ten children will not•

eat for an entire day on a regularbasis.6

For young people experiencing or atrisk of homelessness, the prevalenceof food insecurity and risk ofmalnutrition is significantly higher.A recent study exploring foodinsecurity amongst young peopleengaged with SpecialistHomelessness Services (SHS) inSydney found 70 per cent were foodinsecure.7

Young people experiencinghomelessness often struggled to findenough food to meet their daily

nutritional requirements. They alsoendured the constant anxiety, hunger,stress and embarrassment and stigmaassociated with having to beg andsteal for food. As one said:

‘Imagine waking up in the morning…and you have to go to the chapel[emergency food relief], wherethere are 4,000 other people inexactly the same position as you orworse… and you’re classified asone of those people’.8

To have food security is defined bythe World Health Organisation ashaving access at all times to‘sufficient, safe, nutritious food tomaintain a healthy and active life’.

The Yhunger project was developedin response to the needs describedabove. It is based in Sydney LocalHealth District’s Community HealthServices and run in partnership withYfoundations and a network of youthhealth services and health promotionservices in Sydney. Yhunger aims toincrease food security for youngpeople, aged 12 to 25 who are at riskof or experiencing homelessness, byworking with youth services that offersupport and temporary housing tothese young people.

The Yhunger project has developedpractical resources, which help youthservices to develop young people’sindependent living skills in regard tocooking healthy and affordable food,and is running workshops with youthworkers to introduce these resourcesand support their use. These one-dayworkshops use an interactive ‘trainthe trainer’ format and are based onthe central tenant of ‘learning bydoing’: cooking and eating togetherare important parts of the workshop.Other activities include opportunitiesfor youth workers to reflect on howtheir policies and practices can lead

to the provision of healthier food anddrinks in their services and increasephysical activity options.

The workshops have been madepossible through a grant received bythe Lord Mayor’s CharitableFoundation (Eldon and Anne FooteTrust Donor Advised Program).

The Yhunger workshop givesparticipants an opportunity to‘unpack’ the Yhunger Living Skills Kit.The Kit comes in a pizza box, andcontains Tabletalk (a manual ofactivities for youth workers to run withyoung people), Brainfood (a series of32 associated fact sheets for youngpeople), and two Yhungercookbooks. The cookbooks arecustom made for young people andcontain simple nutritious recipes thatcost between one dollar and fourdollars a serve, and can be preparedin two, four or six serves, dependingon a young person’s living situation.

The revised Yhunger Kit was informedby our research in 2010–11 acrossfour local government areas in theInner West and South WesternSydney. The study involved a needsassessment, which includedinterviews with 16 youth servicemanagers and 50 young people andnine focus groups. Extensive pilottesting of activities and recipes withyouth services were also done. Thecookbooks can be downloaded forfree at www.healthykids.nsw.gov.au/campaigns-programs/yhunger/yhunger-cookbooks.aspx but youneed to attend a workshop to receivethe whole Yhunger Kit.

Lunch at the Yhunger workshop isself-catered: participants worktogether to cook some of the recipesfrom the Yhunger cookbooks. This isa popular part of the day, when youthworkers discuss their work and solve

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problems together in the kitchen andover the lunch table. This experienceconfirms that cooking and eatingtogether creates bonds.

A similar process takes place whenyouth workers shop, cook or eatalongside a young person, despitethe chaos a young person may beexperiencing in their life. Developing‘food literacy’, that is the collection ofknowledge, skills and actions thatenable people to access sufficientand healthy food,9 includes beingable to join in and eat in a social way.Sitting down and eating at the tabletogether is a valuable and sometimesnew experience for young people.

Another poignant moment of theworkshop is when the Hunger Scalegame is played. Participants are askedto stand on a scale of ‘starving’ to‘stuffed’ at different stages of the day,in response to their own hunger cuesand appetites. This is a visual reminderthat until a young person’s hunger andfood insecurity are addressed (that is,they are offered something nourishingto eat or drink), it is unlikely otherissues can be dealt with. Food is abasic need in Maslow’s hierarchy ofneeds and essential to his concept ofself-actualisation.10 Healthier eating isan important step for young peopleworking toward this process.

We know that food insecurity canlead to obesity,11 underweight 12 andthat eating disorders such ashoarding, binge eating and foodobsessions are more prevalent amongyoung people experiencinghomelessness.13 We also know thatthese disordered patterns can ease asfood becomes more available.14

Food insecurity is directly linked toincreased hospitalisations, poorphysical health, vitamin deficiencies,developmental delays and pooracademic performance, behaviouralproblems and poor mental healthincluding anxiety, depression andattention deficient disorders.15

Longer-term, nutritional deficiencies areassociated with low educationalattainment, employability, poor oralhealth and other health issues includingobesity, diabetes and heart disease.16, 17

Given this, how much would youngpeople’s physical and mental healthimprove if we were able to improvetheir food security?

The Yhunger workshops also discussways in which youth services’ policiesand procedures can foster anenvironment and culture supportiveof young people’s health andwellbeing. This can be seen as anapproach to food and health basedon rights: young people, especiallythe most vulnerable, are entitled toservices that respect, protect and fulfiltheir human rights, including anadequate standard of living withgreater food security. Human rightsare interrelated and interdependent.18

This means social and welfare policiesthat affect young people should nottake away other rights such as accessto safe, sufficient and nutritious foodor their civil liberties.

Youth participation in policydevelopment, implementation andevaluation is critical. The sharedunderstanding of young people’s livedexperiences and their everyday realitycan enrich policy processes. Youthservices can take a rights-basedapproach to their work in many ways:by asking at intake and case meetingsif young people are food insecure, bylistening to them non-judgementally,by providing policies and services thataddress food insecurity, and byempowering young people tobecome agents in these changes. Thisrights based approach to addressingfood insecurity is just and fair.

Increased food security amongstyoung people also brings social andemotional benefits. A 2011 evaluationof Foodbank’s WA School BreakfastProgram of 271 participating schoolsfound 92 per cent agreed that theprogram contributed positively to thesocial skills of students, and

significantly increased social relationsbetween students and staff.19

In Yhunger’s qualitative studyexploring food insecurity in Sydney’sspecialist youth homelessness services,social connectedness emerged as acommon theme. Young people viewedfood as a powerful tool to connect(and reconnect), develop relationshipsand bring people together.20

When young people’s growing bodiesand minds are nourished, their abilityto learn and engage in workincreases. They are more likely toparticipate in positive activitiesincluding regular physical activity andconnecting with others and less likelyto engage in risky or criminalbehaviours.21

ConclusionThe food security of our children andyoung people should be a nationalpriority, as it is essential for theircurrent health and futuredevelopment and wellbeing. It isimportant to consider our duty of carefor young people experiencinghomelessness and who carry theadded stress of food insecurity. Wecan help them learn to cook healthyand affordable food and to be able toeat with others: these important andrelevant independent living skills areessential for physical and emotionalhealth and social connectedness. Inthe process, young peopleexperiencing homelessness teach usabout resilience, strength and hope.

The extensive list of references used in thisarticle can be found on the CHP websitewww.chp.org.au

Follow the link to the current edition of Parity.

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Community Health youth workers from Sydney Local Health District with the new Yhunger living skills resource kit in the pizza box

o

A New ChapterHaley Price, Marketing and Communications Manager, St Vincent de Paul Society Victoria

This is Ben’s story. He receivesassistance from the Vinnies Soup Vanand wanted to share his story tohighlight the financial constraints ofsingle parenting and housinginsecurity.

It has been a pretty good year forBenjamin Bell. He recently secured aflat in West Footscray with his10-year-old son, following anextended period of uncertainty withhousing options as a single parent.

‘I’ve been in Footscray for two years.I was moving around, but I’ve finallygot this permanent place,’ he says.

They previously lived in a roominghouse with ten other people paying$600 per month and the onlyalternative was a room for $280 perweek. It was a stressful living situationthat precluded him from having asecure environment for his son.

‘I didn’t want to live with junkies. Iwas on Gumtree for months tryingto find a house.’

They are finally settled now, but notwithout financial pressure.

‘My rent is $1,000 per month andmy income is $1,800 per month inwelfare payments, so I have $800left for me and my boy to pay thegas, electricity, water, schoolpayments, food, travel andeverything else. Now you tell mehow you can live on that?’

Ben has struggled to find work thatis flexible enough to accommodatehis needs as a single dad. He waspreviously an event manager at amajor telecommunications companyand even had his own business inindustrial heating and airconditioning; but these days he isjust making ends meet.

‘When I don’t have credit on myphone, I can’t report to Centrelink, so Iget docked money. Sometimes I don’teven have enough money to get onthe bus to go to Centrelink,’ he says.

‘I’m one of the lucky ones, but we dostill struggle, bad.’

Food is one thing that isnon-negotiable. They have nevergone hungry, but they have gonewithout proper nutrition at times.

‘You end up just having to fill yourstomach,’ he says.

These days, Ben cooks in the smallkitchen in his flat and the VinniesSoup Van stops by too, which is theonly way he can afford to meet hisother financial obligations.

‘We budget on having the Soup Vans.They often provide my son’s food forthe night or lunch the next day,’ he says.

As he has moved around from houseto house, Ben has not always beennear one of the Soup Van’s regularnightly stops and he has often losttouch with available aid services.

In his new home, he is nowembracing a more certain, settledchapter and the Vinnies Soup Van ishelping to make his transition a littleeasier, by providing the basics.

‘No one wants to hear their child saythey’re hungry. They might say theywant something different, but younever want to hear that they’rehungry,’ he says.

Ben proudly says that he and his sonhave never gone hungry — but heknows of other parents who arewatching their kids eat and sacrificingtheir own meals. To keep full, somethings are simply off the menu.

‘We never eat red meat, that’s out ofthe question.’

Thankfully, Ben does not really missthese luxuries. He definitely feelsfrustrated with the welfare system andas a single dad, largely powerless tochange his circumstances — but he ispretty content right now.

‘It’s waters off a ducks back now. Itangers me at times, but I’m comingout the other side of it.’

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Chapter 3: Responding to Food InsecurityResponding to Food Insecurity: The Roleof Dietitians and the Challenges they FaceKatrina Doljanin, Dietitian cohealth

IntroductionFood security is the result of complexsystems — it involves a diverse rangeof variables that influence the foodthat is available to the localcommunity. It also involves a greatmany factors that determine howindividuals interact with this foodsupply.

Dietitians working in communityhealth have the unique opportunity towork with individuals and communityto improve their access to food at anindividual and systemic level. Throughtheir work with individuals, dietitianscan learn much about the particularfactors that influence individuals’ foodaccess issues and be able to identifywhich of those factors are modifiable.Dietitians also have the potential tounderstand the local food system,and where possible, have an influenceon that food system.

This paper will explore the diverseways that dietitians can work toinfluence the food security ofindividuals and also the challengesinherent to their role.

Recognising Food InsecurityFood security is defined as:

‘The ability of individuals,households and communities toacquire food that is healthy,sustainable, affordable,appropriate and accessible.’ 1

This would ideally mean that food isacquired without the need to useemergency relief — a challenge foranyone who is living in poverty.A person who is homeless or at risk ofhomelessness tends to experienceabsolute poverty and poverty isunderstood to be strongly correlatedwith food insecurity. People who arehomeless are therefore particularlyvulnerable to food insecurity.2

Food security involves the complexinterplay of many variables thatwork together. The Second Bite factsheet on Food Security illustratesthese variables, divided into threemain categories: food availability,food access and food utilisation.3

Food availability refers to what isphysically available to the individualor community and can beinfluenced by the local foodlandscape — where are food outletslocated, what type of food isavailable and how much does itcost?

Food access includes factors thatinfluence how easily food can beacquired. Available funds to buyfood, transport/mobility to get tofood outlets and personal capacityto plan for shopping can allinfluence food access.

Food utilisation encompasses theway food is prepared once it hasbeen accessed. Factors influencingfood utilisation include thepresence and suitability of storageand cooking facilities, foodpreparation skills and personalknowledge (including nutrition andfood safety knowledge) as well ascultural considerations.

When assessing individual andcommunity food security, it isimportant that all three pillars offood security are considered.

Addressing Food InsecurityImproving Food UtilisationDietitians’ training equips them withcompetencies that enableassessment of an individual’snutritional status. This assessmentencompasses personal skills andsocial environment. Much of thework with individuals centers onimproving their food utilisation —improving skills and knowledge tobe able to prepare nutritious meals.This can include providing mealideas on a budget, providingnutrition information and guidanceregarding safe food practices.Dietitians are also able to make thisinformation more widely available bydeveloping and disseminatingresources that enhance foodutilisation. Examples of this include:developing recipe books designedfor people with low literacy or thattake into account that some peoplemay not have a kitchen andpamphlets with low cost meal ideas.Dietitians may also design and/orimplement groups targetingimprovement in food handling andcooking skills.

FOOD SECURITY

FOODAVAILABILITY:

Outlet locationVariety of foodPrice & quality

FOOD ACCESS:

Available fundsMobility/transport

Household distribution

FOOD UTILISATION:

Nutrition knowledgePreparation skillsStorage & food

handlingCultural traditions

Figure 1. The pillars of food security — adapted from Second Bite Fact sheet, ‘Food Security: What is It?’

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Improving Food AccessWorking on food utilisation can be afrustrating process or at timescompletely useless if the individualcannot access the local food supplyor if food availability is constrained insome way. For the homelesspopulation, the cost of food is oftentoo great for them to access enoughfood to meet healthy eatingguidelines. This increases thelikelihood that individuals becomemore reliant on emergency relief as aregular source of food.

Dietitians can have a role inimproving access to the local foodsupply. A huge component of this ishaving an understanding ofmainstream and alternative food

systems. What is available to our localhomeless population and how can wehelp them navigate all food systemsto access a variety of food in a waythat is acceptable? Once this isunderstood we can not only helppeople to navigate this system butmake this information more widelyknown through capacity buildingmeasures. Examples of this includeregularly updated brochures thatshow a wide variety of local venuesthat provide free or cheap meals aswell as programs that offer theopportunity to grow food or preparefood in a communal setting.

Capacity building can also include thedevelopment of food securityassessment tools where questions

focusing on various components offood security are attached to locallyavailable resources or services thatcan help. cohealth has such a toolembedded into their assessment formfor the Yarra Café Meals Program.It assists referring workers to identifyareas contributing to food insecurityand to offer a range of options toimprove food security.

Social Café Meals Programs areprograms where meals provided bya café or restaurant are subsidised,thereby enabling people to accesscafé meals that were previouslyunaffordable. While people are onthe Café Meals Program, they haveimproved food security but theyalso have the added benefit of asense of social inclusion, enjoying ameal amongst the community anddeveloping relationships with staffand other patrons. Café MealsPrograms have led to theimprovement in nutritional,physical and mental health formany of its members. Café MealsPrograms rarely follow up clientswho exit the Program so it isuncertain whether these benefitsremain once people are no longera part of the Program.4

‘It has improved nutrition and myenergy which means I feel strongerand more balanced when mymental health is low. It is thedifference between eating and noteating. I was missing four meals afortnight now I’m eating everynight.’

— quote from a member of thecohealth Yarra Café Meals Program

Social exclusion is often experiencedas a part of poverty and foodinsecurity and so it is important thatwhen measuring the effectiveness ofprograms addressing food securitythat we also look at whetherprograms lead to improvements insocial inclusion.

‘With Café Meals you meetdifferent people. I like to sit andobserve people and I hearinteresting conversation.It’s pleasant to do this.’

‘[Café Meals] helps withself-esteem, made me feel partof the local community.’

— quotes from members of thecohealth Yarra Café Meals Program

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Food prepared at cohealth and Cultivating Community run Meet and Eat group…

There are many programs thatdietitians can link clients into thatnot only impact on food security butalso on social inclusion. Amongstthese are social-based food groups.This can include social cookinggroups, gardening groups and food

swaps. These programs can enhanceboth food access as well as foodavailability. If these programs do notexist, it is worthwhile to explorepartnerships that can help to setthem up in your local community —if there is community interest! Suchcommunity food systems are a greatoption for people with limitedfinances and facilities but myexperience and the literature showthat not everyone is keen toparticipate in these alternative foodsystems. Programs such as theseshould definitely be community led.5

Improving Food AvailabilityFood availability is a more difficultcomponent for dietitians and otherprofessionals working with food toinfluence, and often beyond thescope of our practice — many havenot been trained to do so.However, there are now manyprofessional developmentopportunities for dietitians toenhance their public health skillsand to collaborate with otherdietitians and professionals withexpertise in this area.

Dietitians can have a strong role incollaboration and advocacy toinfluence the local food supply.Initiatives such as mapping andpricing ‘studies’ can be useful tools toillustrate the local food landscape —what type of outlets do we have,where are they located relative topockets of disadvantage locally andhow affordable is the food at theseoutlets relative to the available fundsof an individual living in poverty?6

The information gathered can beused to justify funding and supportfor local food security initiatives or tolobby for policy changes that cansupport a more affordable andaccessible food environment.

Looking Ahead —Where to From Here?Food supply and the service sectorare subject to reform that is oftenoutside the scope of our influence.We have seen recent changes thatimpact on the dietitians role — cutsto state health promotion funding,the pending reform of Home andCommunity Care funding and otherchanges that are making a move toworking more with individuals andless capacity to work with socialdeterminants of health. Dietitiansin community health may need to

seek alternative funding options orutilise students to enable healthpromotion and upstreamcommunity nutrition work.

Food pricing is influenced by manyfactors and we do see food prices riseeach year — particularly for preparedmeals. There have been suggestionsto increase the goods and servicestax (GST), which may includeincreases to fresh food. This will havea significant impact on people alreadyexperiencing food insecurity; makingnutritious food even less affordable.Advocacy to prevent further GSTincreases needs to be a part ofeveryone’s food security agenda.

Food pricing and availability willcontinue to be a challenge but moreso with the impacts of climatechange. Climate, soil quality andwater resources will all impact onfood availability. How will we mitigatethese impacts to encourage healthyeating? More importantly what arewe doing now? Where possible, foodprograms and food security initiativesshould aim to reduce their carbonfootprint. A focus on reducingpackaging and waste, promoting amore plant-based diet, encouragingseasonal eating and promoting localfood systems is definitely compatiblewith a diet that is affordable andnutritious.

Endnotes

1. Rychetnik L, Webb K, Story L, Katz T 2003,Food Security Options Paper: A FoodSecurity Planning Framework: A menu ofoptions for policy and planninginterventions, NSW Centre for PublicHealth Nutrition.

2. Booth S, Smith A 2001, Food Insecurity inAustralia, Challenges for dietitians,Australian Journal of Nutrition andDietetics, vol.58, no.3.

3. SecondBite, Food Insecurity: What is It?http://secondbite.org/sites/ default/files/SecondBite per cent20Fact per cent20Sheet per cent20Series_Food per cent20Insecurity.pdf

4. Doljanin K, Olaris K 2004, Subsidised CaféMeals Program: more than just a cheapmeal, Australian Journal of Primary Health,no.10, pp.54–60.

5. Markow K, Booth S, Savio S, Coveney J2016, Improving access to community-based food systems: Comparingperspectives of low socioeconomicindividuals and food systemrepresentatives, Nutrition and Dietetics,no.73, pp.19–27.

6. Rossimel A, Han S, Larsen K, Palermo C2016, Access and affordability of nutritiousfood in metropolitan Melbourne, Nutritionand Dietetics, no.73, pp.13–18.

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Cooking at cohealth’s Market to Kitchencooking group

cohealth community garden inNorth Melbourne

Sandwich bar at one of the cafes participatingin the cohealth Melbourne Café Meals Program

A Decade of Good Food —Café Meals in the Geelong Region:A Ten Year ReflectionAlyssa Huxtable and Jill Whelan

In essence, the Café Meals projectenables a young person to purchase ahealthy meal for $3.00 from amember café. Members have a card(like a coffee card) that is stampedwith each visit and after 12 meals,they return to their youth worker andanother card is issued if still required.The underlying premise is aboutchoice: choice of venue, what to eat(within limits), when to eat and withwhom to eat. At first glance CaféMeals is about food; however itsimpact is far greater than that. It issocial inclusion; it is subtle educationabout healthy choices; it providessafe and warm places and it ismainstream access to food. Ahomeless young person sits on thetable next to a high profile businessperson — and everyone is the same.It is empowerment.

During 2005, dietary data wascollected and analysed on 25 youngpeople experiencing homelessnessfrom Geelong and Colac. The dataidentified multiple nutrientdeficiencies and was validatedthrough interviews with youthworkers, social workers and managersof youth agencies who regularlyengaged with and supported theseyoung people. In reviewing whatcould be done to improve the foodsecurity and reduce the hunger ofthese young people, Café Meals wasfloated as idea in September 2005.When a variety of options waspresented to two focus groups ofyoung people, Café Meals was theproject unanimously supported by theyoung people, and separately by thestaff and managers of Time for Youth(TFY), now amalgamated with otheragencies and known as Barwon Child,Youth and Family (BCYF).

In 2005, when the data was collected,it was common for young people topool their resources and ‘buy $10

worth of chips’ because that would‘fill us up’. The affordability of twolitre bottles of soft-drink also meantthat a tasty, affordable mealcomprised largely of fat, salt andsugar could stave away the hungerthat others reported as ‘feeling likemy stomach was eating itself’.

In May 2006, the Percy Baxterfoundation provided $25,000 for aninitial pilot project of Café Meals.Café’s that exhibited a youth friendlyenvironment (outdoor eating areas,a variety of communal and quietspaces, food on display rather thanwritten menus) and a socialconscience were invited to join.Although the funding path has notbeen smooth, Café Meals hasoperated continuously since that timeand will soon celebrate its tenthanniversary.

Since Café Meals started, almost300 young people have beenassisted. In 2010, Time for Youth wassuccessful in obtaining funding fromThe William Buckland Foundation toevaluate the Café Meals program anddevelop a ‘kit’ that could be used tohelp other regional and rural centresset up a similar program. The CaféMeals Kit is available for download atwww.bcyf.org.au and supportingdocuments are available by callingCafé Meals on 52214466.

The evaluation in 2010 wasconducted by Jill Whelan, inpartnership with Time for Youth andRMIT University and funded by TheWilliam Buckland Foundation. Theevaluation looked at Café Meals fromthe perspectives of the youngpeople, the café owners, the youthand social workers and themanagement of the youth agency.

The project was overwhelminglysupported by all sectors. When data

was compared with baselineinformation it was clear that youngpeople’s meal frequency andvegetable consumption wereincreased. Importantly they valuedthe social connectivity that CaféMeals enabled. They specificallyvalued being able to meet with theirsupport worker at a café rather thanan office and also meet withestranged family members in a‘neutral environment’. These were justsome of the many unexpectedoutcomes of what started as a foodrelief strategy.

These same social outcomes continuetoday, with a young person recentlyreporting that Café Meals assistedwith food security, budgeting,confidence and encouragement.After a day of ‘going out job seeking,it is the reward of the day, (going to)the café.’ The 2010 evaluationreported a young person visiting acafé and proudly telling the staff sheno longer needed a café meals cardbecause she had a job. Anotheryoung person obtained a job at oneof the café meals cafes. In some waysthese are isolated stories, in otherways they are individuals whose lifehas been changed through multiplesupports. One of these supportsinvolves food relief in a sociallyinclusive environment.

ChallengesThe major challenge for Café Mealshas always been funding. It is clearthat despite the significant fundingissues, Café Meals has survivedbecause it has always looked formultiple funding supports and hasenjoyed unwavering and very strongmulti-level management support fromboth Time for Youth and BarwonChild, Youth and Family. Ongoingsupport from cafes, referring staff,executive and senior management

30

has played a huge role in ensuringthe survival of Café Meals.

Currently Café Meals is undergoing achange in data collection which ishoped to assist in securing futurefunding by proving need and impactthrough pre and post programevaluation.

What the Young People Say‘I feel that the service that the CaféMeals program provides is excellentand very helpful. I have found it helpsme afford to eat meals in town, whileI am on the go and busy withappointments or job seeking andunable to carry a large bag with lunchwhile job seeking/cold canvasing.’

‘I have found the experience anawesome privilege and a valuable giftfor individuals and youth, who aretrying to save money to manage billsand use public transport who areoften looking for work or strugglingfinancially. I am happy to say havingmy Café Meals card handy is areassuring thing …’

‘Every meal, …, thanks to the CaféMeals program has been top quality,fresh and satisfying. I haven’t had togo hungry when I have been low onmoney because of Café Meals.’

In what aspects has Café Mealshelped you?

‘…it has helped me not go hungry’.

‘Confidence — to sit and eat at thecafé, meet people, makeconnections.’

What the Café and YouthSupport Agencies SayDave, owner and manager ofCourthouse Café (Café Meals café)when reflecting on the program,mentioned the unique position cafesare in to help young people try newand healthy things from the menu.Dave has been an ongoing supportand asset to the Café Meals programfor a number of years and his passionfor nutritious food is passed on toCafé Meals patrons.

Ria Bua, reflecting back on theinception of the program ten yearsago, said:

‘TFY first introduced Jill Whelan to usand wanted staff input to assist her

with her PhD around what we calltoday food security. Jill arrangedfocus groups and role plays in a cafésetting; it was a success and thencame rolling out the (Café Meals)cards; still today I support the CaféMeals program and believe it isfantastic; the young people reallyembrace eating healthy food in thecafes. Time For Youth and now BCYFwere very lucky to have met Jill tenyears ago and have a strong programstill running today.’

Ben (Youth and Family SupportWorker) adds that ‘having access tohealthy and cheap food is usually notthe highest priority for many youngpeople who are accessing our servicesbut Café Meals is a great way to startthe conversation around food security.I have found that food security has theability to affect a person’s behaviour,problem solving skills, socialengagement and mental health.’

‘A number of other clients have beenliving on one to two meals a day formultiple weeks because it is toodifficult to afford food while beingtransient. When a young person hasnot eaten or has eaten poorly it canbe difficult for them to makeinformed decisions surroundingsupport. Having the option to meetover lunch helps them focus onimportant choices that they need tomake as well as make the settingmore informal which helps increasethe rapport that workers have with ayoung person.’

‘Barwon Child, Youth and Family arecontinuing the commitment made byTime For Youth to the Café Mealsprogram. We recognise there is aneed for Café Meals within the

community and particularly within thevulnerable population we, as anorganisation support. We arecommitted to creating a sustainablefuture for Café Meals and working toexpand the program as ourorganisation continues to grow.’

— Kate Morrissy, Executive Director,Organisational Development, BCYF).

Broader supportAs part of anti-poverty week, theGovernor General and Lady Cosgrovevisited Geelong and BCYF to hearabout the Café Meals program and tolunch with some of the young peopleinvolved. BCYF CEO Sandy Morrisonvolunteered to join the staff of one ofthe Café Meals cafes as part of theevent. The day was a success, withgreat awareness raised about CaféMeals through the political and mediapresence (see photo and short videoat https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rksa-aNEtKM).

A Growing MovementThe Geelong Café Meals programlearnt much from the City of Yarra’scafé meals program which continuesto operate. There are various iterationsof Café Meals. ‘Inner SouthCommunity Health has beendelivering their version of a social cafemeals program, ‘Social Spoons’ since2012. Social Spoons targets one of thekey determinants of homelessness:social isolation. For more information,and a short video, please visithttp://socialspoons.org.au/

Other variations of the Geelong CaféMeals program include cohealth’s Cityof Melbourne Café Meals Programand new to the café meals network isBallarat’s Meals for Change program.

The Governor General and Lady Cosgrove visited Geelong and BCYF to hear about the Café Meals program

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Exploring the Experience of FoodInsecurity Among Mothers SeekingAsylum in Melbourne Using PhotovoiceChrystal Yam, Registered Nutritionist, National Nutrition Programs Manager, Secondbite

Political ContextIn 2014, Australia received 8,960applications for asylum fromindividuals seeking protection visas.1

The rights an asylum seeker has toaccess public healthcare such asMedicare, welfare payments, andthe right to work and study isaffected by their method of arrival inAustralia and the timeframe whichtheir visa application was submitted.Some asylum seekers who are livingwithin the community waiting for theoutcome of their visa applicationmay be eligible to access limitedfinancial assistance through theAsylum Seeker Assistance Scheme(ASAS) and the CommunityAssistance Support Scheme (CAS).

Problems Faced by AsylumSeekersAsylum seekers may carry significanttrauma from their country of origin,during relocation, and through thedifficult process of seeking asylumwithin another country.2, 3 Althoughresettlement offers manyopportunities, asylum seekers andrefugees often carry the burdens oftheir past which can include socialdisconnection, displacement,famine, war and overcrowding.4, 5

Unlike individuals who have beengranted refugee status, asylumseekers are subjected toconsiderable hardship such aslimited income and poor access toaffordable healthcare and housingwhile waiting on immigrationdecisions. Poor health may beexperienced by asylum seekersupon arrival in Australia and maybe worsened by languagedifficulties, low self-esteem andmental illness, cultural and religion-related barriers, and economicstress.6, 7 In addition to theseexperiences, asylum seekers arealso at risk of experiencing food

insecurity and homelessness whichcan have negative social andpsychological implications.8, 9, 10, 11

Food insecurity among asylumseeker and refugee populations ispredominantly associated witheconomic factors such as limitedincome to purchase food orcompeting financialpriorities.12, 13, 14, 15, 16

However, non-economic factors suchas difficulties navigating the foodenvironment in a new country whenshopping for food,17, 18, 19 languagedifficulties,20, 21, 22 and limited accessto transport 23, 24 also contribute tofood security. Studies from Australia,the United States and the UnitedKingdom have demonstrated levelsof food insecurity among asylumseeker or resettled refugeepopulations between 71 and100 per cent.25, 26, 27, 28, 29

The only estimate of food insecurityamong refugees in Australia comesfrom a study conducted in Perth,Western Australia, which found71 per cent of refugee householdswere food insecure.30 In Australiawhere there is evidence of poornutrition among migrant communitiesthere is a need to addresses foodinsecurity to ultimately improve healthoutcomes for asylum seekers andrefugees.31, 32, 33

Emergency Food ReliefFood banks are a form of charitablefood assistance intended to providetemporary relief for peopleexperiencing food insecurity. InAustralia, Booth and Whelan in their2014 article Hungry for Changeagree that the food banking industryas it stands is a temporary solutionto food poverty while masking theunderlying causes which requireserious government attention.34

Although initially designed as acommunity intervention to provideshort term food relief, in reality foodbanks and other forms of foodassistance may be frequented byhouseholds on an ongoing basis asa coping mechanism to alleviatefood insecurity.35, 36, 37

The Asylum Seeker Resource Centre(ASRC) was founded in 2001 and isAustralia’s largest asylum seekerorganisation, offering support anddelivering services such as legalassistance, healthcare, material aid,English classes, counselling,orientation and settlement assistance.The ASRC also provides emergencyfood relief through the ASRCFoodbank and Community Mealsprogram. In 2013–2014approximately 160 families accessedthe ASRC Foodbank and almost halfof these asylum seekers had no workrights or access to welfarepayments,38 demonstrating the vitalrole ASRC Foodbank plays inrelieving hunger among asylumseekers in Melbourne.

The ASRC Foodbank is set up in theformat of a supermarket to offermembers a dignified way to accessfood relief. Foods are categorised bycore food groups according to theAustralian Guide to Healthy Eatingand ASRC members ‘shop’ based ona points system which prioritisesfoods considered healthy, such asfruits and vegetables and promotesequitable food distribution amongmembers. The quantity of foodprovided to ASRC members (termused to describe asylum seekers whoaccess ASRC services) is dependentupon availability, family size andaccess to income. Similar to otherfood banks, the ASRC Foodbank isstaffed predominantly by volunteersand the majority of food is donatedby individuals and businesses, or food

32

charities such as SecondBite,FareShare and Foodbank Victoria.

The ASRC Foodbank aims to providehealthy food and equitabledistribution, and the organisationsupports a vision to improve foodsecurity amongst asylum seekers.Despite this, the ASRC is unable tomeet the complete nutritional needsof ASRC members.39 A studyconducted in 2009 assessednutritional quality of the ASRCFoodbank via a basket audit andconcluded that participants wereunable to meet their minimumnutritional requirements forvegetables and legumes, fruits, dairy,and meat and meat alternativesaccording to the Australian Guide toHealthy Eating, and despite someparticipants accessing food externallyto the ASRC, the ASRC Foodbankremained the main source of food forall participants.40

There is limited data describing theexperiences of food insecurity,however understanding these livedexperiences is fundamental toproviding an effective response forpeople seeking asylum. This articlepresents data collated through theauthor’s Master of Public Health thesissupervised by Dr Claire Palermo atMonash University and supported bythe ASRC.

A Photovoice Snapshot:Lived Experiences of FoodInsecurity Among MothersSeeking AsylumA Photovoice study was undertakento explore the experiences of foodinsecurity amongst mothers seekingasylum in Melbourne, Australia.Participants were recruited throughthe ASRC Foodbank (n=3) andqualitative participatory researchmethodology Photovoice wasapplied to collect and analyse data.Photovoice promotes the individualrealities of disenfranchised people,encouraging photography ofsubjects of importance to them thatare related to the topic ofinvestigation. In this study,Photovoice allowed participants todefine their concerns and prioritiesin relation to food and the factorswhich contribute to food insecurity.Participants were provided with acamera and asked to takephotographs to answer the researchquestion, ‘What aspects of your

everyday life affect what you eat andhow much food you have to eat?’.Photographs to share in a focusgroup were selected individually andmajor themes were identified anddiscussed by participants by sharingtheir stories and photographs.

Despite the ASRC’s best efforts toreduce vulnerability and hunger,significant issues contributing tooverall hardship included inadequatequantity and variety of food to meetnutritional requirements, limitedunderstanding of where to obtainspecific foods of cultural importance,and low finances. Overall two major

themes emerged; resilience in theface of these hardships and continuedpractice of strong nutrition principles.

The study indicated that participantswere resourceful in seeking additionalhelp to access food through vouchersor coupons, adapting to unfamiliarfoods and making the most of whatthey had access to. Despitedependence on the ASRC Foodbank,all participants described purchasingfood when they could afford it.Common coping strategies toovercome food shortages includedpurchasing discounted meat andvegetables, and freezing bulk

Child’s lunchbox at the start of the week

Child’s lunchbox at the end of the week

33

T

C

T

t

A

t

A

T

f

ingredients. Participants sharedexperiences of constructing mealsfrom unfamiliar foods and adaptingrecipes to the food available at theASRC Foodbank.

‘Last week I come here (ASRC) so Ifind that a kind of food. I believe Idon’t know what was that. So Iwent home and just slice that andtry to cook that.’

Despite low finances being a majorcontributor to food insecurity amongparticipants of this study, limitedtransport options were considered amajor contributor which influencedthe quantity and types of foodparticipants selected from the foodbank. To cope with public transportdifficulties, participants took less foodand considered lighter food itemswhich were easier to carry.

‘I would take little things. Thatway, like I remember what is therein the home still where I can usefor more days So I don’t take thatthing, I take another thing.’

All participants demonstratedapplied knowledge of nutritionprinciples and the importance oftrying to source meat and dairyproducts beyond the ASRCFoodbank, due to the inconsistentavailability of these foods. Foodinsecurity is often associated withlimited food variety andconsumption of high energy, lowcost foods,41 however this study didnot reveal an increased consumptionof high energy foods. Unhealthyfoods were described byparticipants as ‘treats’ or ‘snacks’which indicates a low frequency ofconsumption, with the exception ofone participant who providedconfectionary in her children’slunchboxes.

‘I think this is the end of the uhweek. Less is. No more carrot orcucumber there. (pause) We runout of things.’

ConclusionDespite the small sample size, thisstudy provides valuable insights intothe lived experiences of foodinsecurity among mothers seekingasylum and accessing a source ofemergency food relief in Melbourne,Australia. Although emergency foodrelief is critical in relieving immediate

hunger, the charitable food sector’sinability to sustainably meetrecipients’ nutritional requirementsmay compromise the health andwellbeing of individuals relying onfood relief in the long-term.Emergency food relief should seek tomeet the cultural and nutritionalneeds of community members suchas those seeking asylum by providingmore variety and greater quantities offood, while simultaneously reviewingthe needs of users and advocating forpolicy reform to address theunderlying social and political causesof food insecurity.

Contact: chrystalyam@yahoo.com.au

Endnotes

1. United Nations High Commissioner forRefugees (UNHCR) 2014, UNHCR AsylumTrends 2014: Levels and Trends inIndustrialised Countries, UNHCR, Geneva.

2. Piwowarczyk L, Keane T, Lincoln A, 2008,Hunger: the silent epidemic among asylumseekers and resettled refugees,International Migration, vol.46, no.1,pp.59–77.

3. Southcombe F 2008, Feeding the family inan unfamiliar environment: Food insecurityamong recently resettled refugees, NSWRefugee Health Service, Sydney.

4. ibid

5. Hadley C and Sellen D 2006, Food securityand child hunger among recently resettledLiberian refugees and asylum seekers: apilot study, Journal of Immigrant Health,no. 8, pp.369–375.

6. Southcombe F 2008 op cit.

7. Renzaho A 2002, Addressing the needs ofrefugees and humanitarian entrants inVictoria: an evaluation of health andcommunity services, Centre for Culture,Ethnicity and Health, . Melbourne.

8. Booth S and Smith A 2001, Food securityand poverty in Australia — challenges fordietitians, Australian Journal of Nutritionand Dietetics, vol.58, no.3, pp.150–156.

9. Gallegos D, Ellies P, Wright J 2008, Stillthere’s no food! Food insecurity in arefugee population in Perth, WesternAustralia, Nutrition and Dietetics, no. 65,pp.78–83.

10. Vozoris N, Tarasuk V 2002, Household foodinsufficiency is associated with poorerhealth, Journal of Nutrition, no.133,pp.120–6.

11. Siefert K, Heflin C, Corcoran M, Williams D2004, Food insufficiency and physical andmental health in a longitudinal survey ofwelfare recipients, Journal of Health andSocial Behaviour, vol.45, no.2, pp.171–186.

12. Piwowarczyk L et al 2008 op cit.

13. Hadley C 2008 op cit.

14. Renzaho A 2002 op cit.

15. Hadley C, Patil C, Nahayo D 2010,Difficulty in the food environment and theexperience of food insecurity amongrefugees resettled in the United States,

Ecology of Food and Nutrition, vol.49,no.5, pp.390–407.

16. Sellen D, Tedstone A, Frize J 2002, Foodinsecurity among refugee families in EastLondon: results of a pilot assessment,Public Health Nutrition, vol.5, no.5,pp.637–644.

17. Booth S 2001 op cit

18. Gallegos D 2008 et al op cit.

19. Renzaho A 2002 op cit.

20. Southcombe F 2008 op cit.

21. Gallegos D 2008 et al op cit.

22. Vozoris N 2002 et al op cit.

23. Siefert 2004 K et al op cit.

24. Hadley C 2006 et al op cit.

25. Gallegos D 2008 et al op cit.

26. Hadley C 2006 et al op cit.

27. Dharod J, Croom J, Sady C, Morrell D2011.,Dietary intake, food security, andacculturation among somali refugees in theUnited States: results of a pilot study,Journal of Immigrant and Refugee Studies,vol.9, no.1, pp.82–97.

28. Burns C, Webster K, Crotty P, Ballinger M,Vincenzo R, Rozman M 2000, Easing theTransition: food and nutrition issues of newarrivals, Health Promotion Journal ofAustralia, vol.10, no.3, pp.230–236.

29. Lambie-Mumford H 2013, ‘Every townshould have one’: emergency food bankingin the UK, Journal of Social Policy, no.42,pp.73–89.

30. Hadley C, et al 2010 op cit, pp.390–407.

31. Booth S 2001 op cit.

32. Gallegos D 2008 et al op cit.

33. Burns C, Webster K, Crotty P, Ballinger M,Vincenzo R, Rozman M 2000, Easing theTransition: food and nutrition issues of newarrivals, Health Promotion Journal ofAustralia. Vol.10, no.3, pp.230–236.

34. Booth S and Whelan J 2014, Hungry forchange: the food banking industry inAustralia, British Food Journal, vol.116,no.9, pp.1392–1404.

35. Lambie-Mumford H 2013. ‘Every townshould have one’: emergency food bankingin the UK. Journal of Social Policy. 2013,no.42, pp.73–89.

36. Lambie-Mumford H, Dowler E 2014, Risinguse of ‘food aid’ in the United Kingdom,British Food Journal, vol.116, no.9,pp.1418–1425.

37. Loopstra R, Tarasuk V 2012, Therelationship between food banks andhousehold food insecurity amonglow-income Toronto families, CanadianPublic Policy, vol.38, no.4, pp.497–514.

38. Asylum Seeker Resource Centre(ASRC).Asylum Seeker Resource Centre AnnualReport ASRC, Melbourne.

39. O’Reilly S, O’Shea T, Bhusumane S 2012,Nutritional vulnerability seen within asylumseekers in Australia. Journal of ImmigrantMinority Health, no.14, pp.356–360.

40. ibid.

41. Adams E, Grummer-Strawn L, Chavez G2003, Food insecurity is associated withincreased risk of obesity in Californiawomen, Journal of Nutrition, n.133,pp.1070–1074.

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The Sacred HeartMission Meals ProgramChris Middendorp, Manager, Sacred Heart Central, Sacred Heart Mission

The term food security has a ratherhollow Orwellian ring to it and strikesthis writer as a limp euphemism forsomething that should be understoodin more emphatic terms. In anAustralian context at least we aresaying that people are going hungryin a land of plenty.

Starvation or deprivation in a cultureso earnestly obsessed with fine foodand coffee, not to mention interiordesign and real estate pricessuggests a culture of uncertainprinciples. ‘Twas ever thus. The moreradical welfare services that providedsandwiches to disadvantaged peoplein the early 1960s, during thelacklustre but contented Menziesperiod, were founded on the notionthat poverty in Australia wasunnecessary, verging onblasphemous. But here we still are.

As the ugly term ‘soup kitchen’reminds us, homelessness servicesand food provision have beenconnected all over the world formost of the modern era. Traditionalcharity models of welfare deliveryhave generally provided food topeople identified as ‘needy’because it’s the most practical andpossibly the easiest need to meet. Itis also the easiest aspect of servicedelivery for the general public andphilanthropists to understand andget behind. Feeding the hungry is areadily accepted virtue, not tomention a Biblically endorsed one.

These days even the inescapablecelebrity chef Jamie Oliver hasfashioned a side career showing ushow disadvantaged peoplegenerally have less access tonutritionally sound food than othermembers of our community.

Clearly this is a well understoodphenomenon and it doesn’t require

a Churchill Fellowship to uncoverthe reasons. In Australia it’s generallya combination of education (notknowing what ingredients to buyand how to prepare them) andfinancial disadvantage (not havingthe financial resources to purchasegood ingredients in the first place).

In the case of people who arehomeless, there is one other obviousconsideration — the absence of akitchen. How do you preparenutritional meals for yourself whenyou are living on the street oroccupying a room without cookingfacilities? And if you are struggling tosurvive on the street, there isn’t muchoccasion to contemplate your diet.

Sacred Heart Mission is well knownfor its extensive meals programwhich in a typical year providesaround 130,000 meals to peopleexperiencing homelessness.Although feeding people is in itselfa critical function of our service, itshould also be understood that ourservice uses food as an engagementtool. In other words, we hope thatpeople will come for the food butstay on for the professional supportour staff can provide — whether thatis case management, medical careor linkages to our aged care, mentalhealth and drug and alcoholservices.

Many people with histories oftrauma and complex behaviours findapproaching a shop front welfareservice a difficult and unpleasanttask. By providing free food toencourage people to attend aservice, our staff can gradually buildtrust with people and from thereencourage them to seek assistancewith some real challenges.

There’s a great deal of diversityamongst the 400 people who come

to us for a meal every day. Manyhave no access to a kitchen or afridge. Others have access to bothbut do not know how to cook.Others still come for the socialcontact and enjoy the experience ofsharing a meal with others.

A client of Maori origin once told us,‘When you eat alone you are lonely,when you eat alongside others, youfeel like you belong somewhere.’That’s as good a description of whatwe try to achieve with the mealsprogram as anything else I haveheard. Bringing people together fora meal in a safe and welcomingplace is a foundation point ofcommunity.

The nutritional benefit of the mealsisn’t always of primary importance toour service users. One of the morecommon items of client feedbackprovided is the request for more softdrinks, pies, hot dogs and sweetdesserts. These are items we rarelyserve, since we believe our role is toprovide nutritionally sound food withlow fat, sugar and sodium content.Every year we conduct anindependent nutritional analysis toensure we’re still on the right track.Sometimes we turn down donationsof soft drinks or other junk food onthe basis that these are not in thehealth interests of our service users,some of whom struggle with obesityand diabetes.

Any organisation offering a mealsservice to a disadvantaged cohort hasa responsibility to do it appropriately;attending to every food safety andhygiene practice and ensuring thatmenus are carefully considered andplanned. In our case, because we areopen every day of the year, thisrequires a great deal of logisticaleffort. Providing food security iscomplex work.

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Every day it takes five paid mealsstaff and around 23 communityvolunteers to provide and clean upafter 400 meals are served.Dishwashing alone takes a team offour people working over fourhours each.

Storage is a critical factor. Our foodis sourced from a range of locations.We have generous donors in themeat and produce industries, localbusinesses and schools donateingredients to us and we get solidsupport from food rescueorganisations. But we can only

accept what we can safely store. Wehave a dry store, two large freezercontainers and two cool rooms —not an abundance of storage.Thankfully a generous company alsoallows us to store pallets of frozenmeat off site.

The challenge for meals services likeours is to develop a range ofresponses past simple mealsprovision and encourage clients tobuild independence. We must workto embolden those with access tocooking facilities to source and cooktheir own healthy ingredients and,

for the past year, we have beenexploring how we can provide moresophisticated opportunities forpeople to improve their generalwellbeing, including informalnutrition and cooking classes.

Food rescue organisations do someof their best work in distributingingredients and meals directly topeople who can prepare or servefood where they live. We do someof our best work when we link aclient into mainstream services andbuild their independence. All thisstarts with a meal.

Image supplied by Vinnies Food Vans

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TowardsDignity on a PlateTony McCosker, CEO, St Mary’s House of Welcome

‘Would you like fries with that?’The art of up-selling has been verymuch to the fore in the retail industryin recent years. It is an art that hasbeen practiced by social welfareworkers in ‘emergency food’ centresfor many many years. They haveprovided the essential — the food,but they have also sought to provide‘the extras’. What are those ‘extras’and how have they assisted people tosurvive, to thrive and to exit homelessservices?

If we look at Maslow’s hierarchy ofneeds, we see food and shelter as themost basic and essential of humanneeds closely followed by health,hygiene and the need for relationships/community and education. Manyneeds can be met at the meal table.

Soup Kitchen to Soup KitchenPlus: A Charity ModelAn historical look at the gradualdevelopment of a model of service atSt Mary’s House of Welcome(SMHOW) in Fitzroy over 55 years isinstructive in demonstrating both thelink between the communal mealtable and access to multiple socialwelfare services, as well as thematuring of service responses to thequestion of food insecurity.

Established in 1959 by the Daughtersof Charity as a soup kitchen, SMHOWwas initially a very basic response to avery basic need, that is, food for thehungry provided by a local group tomeet a very apparent local need.Soon other elements were added tothe service to meet other very basicneeds, that is, free showers andhygiene kits and a change of clothingfrom a very basic Opportunity Shop.This basic ‘charity model’ responsewas managed by religious Sisters andnumerous volunteers, financedthrough donations and the good willof the community. It is not surprising

that a ‘welcoming attitude’ and asense of ‘community’ became thefocus for all involved.

From Soup Kitchen Plus toWelfare: Social Justice ModelSocial justice imperatives based onthe Gospel values and the foundingspirit of the Daughters of Charitydemanded that something furtherneeded to be added to the service inorder to address the causes of foodinsecurity and to address theindividual needs of each service user.It was seen that the charity responsecould be built on and developed intoa social justice response. The soupkitchen and the charity response wasthe base platform: additional servicesand responses needed to be addedso that a more holistic approachcould be taken to addressing thecauses of food insecurity.

For this reason, SMHOW applied forgovernment funding (SupportedAccommodation and AssistanceProgram in 1987; Mental Health 1994;and Alcohol and Other Drug in 2002)in order to enable a more professionaland holistic response to service users.It was at this point that the mealservice, while essential, was seen moreas an ‘engagement tool’, a steppingstone into addressing the other lifeissues that caused the service user tobe food insecure, accommodationinsecure, facing addictions andmultiple exclusions from socialengagement opportunities.

With funding for the professionalservices established, the ‘extras’ werepossible. Fortunately many elements ofthe ‘charity response’ were continuedwith further development of volunteerengagement and philanthropicfunding. The move to a ’social justiceresponse’ opened the way for a deeperand more broad-ranging response toservice users and meal service

participants. Some of the mental healthservices were offered on a ‘drop-in’basis and SMHOW became known orreferred to as a Drop In centre.

From Drop-In Centre to OpenAccess Engagement CentreIn 2005 the Board of SMHOW madethe huge decision to redevelop thepremises so that it reflected both thefounding values of the organisationand the needs of a modern welfareservice and, based on 55 years ofknowledge, the needs of service userswho experience homelessness,mental health and addiction issuesand are generally excluded fromcommunity on many levels.

The new purpose-built facility wasdesigned with the following needs inmind: a welcoming and dignifiedcommunal space, a safe space, a brightand lively ambiance that would beopen to all on the ground floor (OpenAccess and Engagement), includingspace for external service providers;and on the first floor a collection of self-development, group educationalspaces where service users could opt tobe engaged in specifically designedactivities relevant to their needs.

SMHOW has gradually movedtowards an Active Support andAdvocacy Model of service delivery.This model has four focal points:

Centre Based — focusing on a1.safe supportive environment for allcomers; culturally sensitive withstructured programs and activities.(Open Access)

Relationship focused — client2.centred, welcoming episodicpresentations, active support.(Engagement)

Flexible and responsive —3.providing advocacy, information

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and referral and communitylinkages. (Client Informed Multifocalresponse and External Linkages)

Community connection —4.providing social inclusion andlinking to broader community;supported referral to mainstreamservices. (Social Inclusion, Internaland External)

Towards Dignity on a PlateAnd how are all of these enhancedservices and the new service modeladdressing the issue of foodinsecurity? There is no doubt that themeal service remains the draw cardthat attracts people to the OpenAccess hub. Annual evaluations of themeal service over the past ten yearshave indicated clearly that serviceusers value the meal for the ‘extras’that come with it — the communalengagement, a sense of beingvalued, the experience of beingtreated with dignity and theengagement with volunteers whorespect them.

The mantra for the catering staff andthe volunteers has become ‘Dignityon a Plate’. Facets of the service arethat meals are served in a dignifiedmanner with volunteers waiting ontables (no queues, no lining up),service users being trained toparticipate in the food preparationand delivery. The pathway from beingwaited on to being a waiter is apathway to social inclusion for some.

As a result of a review of the mealservice in 2012, SMHOW decided tointroduce a ‘co-payment’ for themidday meal. Breakfast has alwaysbeen a free service and the middaymeal has been by donation if theservice user so desired. The rationalefor introducing the two dollarco-payment for lunch was two-fold:firstly, many service-users feltdignified by the fact that they weremaking a contribution; and secondly,it gave social support staff theopportunity to engage withservice-users who were experiencingextreme financial hardship and toassist in addressing the issues aroundfood insecurity.

Future DevelopmentsIt is clear that the movement awayfrom block funding and towardsindividual support packages will havea big impact in the social welfare

sector. For better or worse, agencieswill be required to adapt in order tobe in a position to supply client-drivenchoices. Since food security is sofundamental in the hierarchy of needs,it is hard to image that the demandfor food services will decline.

Based on the premise that thedemand for meal services will followhomelessness and health trends, thereis every indication that the demandfor meal services will increase.Australian Bureau of Statistics datapredicts that there will be a continualgrowth in the Melbourne population.At the same time, unemploymentrates have grown. The back-log fromthe 20 per cent homelessness growthin Victoria between 2006 and 2011 is,and will continue to be, a major factor.

Locally, for SMHOW in Fitzroy, thepicture is even bleaker. The City ofYarra has a rate of homelessness fivetimes greater than the state average.

Many of these people are sleepingrough or squatting in the local area.Their immediate needs are food andshelter in a safe place followed byhygiene and health requirements, thesorts of services that have traditionallybeen provided by charities.

As the historical development outlinedabove indicates, the ‘charity response’,while valued and honoured, is onlypart of the solution in addressing thefood security issue. In order to providea more holistic and social justice basedresponse to the issue, there needs tobe some additional layers of responsethat address the broader social issuesand individual needs of those seekingfood support. A holistic and sociallyresponsible response will require theinput of the local community,volunteers, philanthropy, socialenterprise and government. All willhave a part to play and there will beno room for devolution of thisresponsibility.

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Working in Partnership with the Charitable Food Sectorto Better Meet the Food Needs of People in Perth

Christina Pollard, Curtin University, Sue Booth, Flinders University of South Australia, Andrea Begley,Curtin University, Deborah Kerr, Curtin University, Bruce Mackintosh, University of Western Australia,Jonine Jancey, Curtin University, Cathy Campbell and Jill Whelan, Deakin University, Rex Milligan,FoodBank WA, Joel Berg, New York City Coalition Against Hunger, Bernie Fisher, Western AustralianCouncil of Social Service, Kris Halliday, Salvation Army and Martin Caraher, City University London

The Western Australian communityfaces increasing numbers of peoplevulnerable to food insecurity due totheir economic or social circumstance.This is partly due to geographicisolation and the cost of food, as wellas the demise of the mining boomand a stalled economy. For example,food costs more in remote areas,26 per cent more for a healthy foodbasket than in the Perth metropolitanarea. Welfare dependent families inWA would need to spend 44 per centof their disposable income topurchase a healthy diet compared toonly 14 per cent average incomeearners.1 This simply does nothappen, as food is the one areafamilies can sacrifice to pay for otherexpenditures.

As a result of these factors andcombined with cost of livingpressures, many more WestAustralians are suffering food povertyand turning to charitable food reliefto feed themselves and their families.

People at increased risk of foodinsecurity include those living alone,single parents, Aboriginal and/orTorres Strait Islander people,homeless people, migrants andrefugees. Food insecurity is occurringin middle income Australia as the costof living bites deeper.

The charitable food sector (CFS) is akey part of the emergency reliefresponse comprising of direct serviceproviders (who provide food directlyto people), food bankingstakeholders (including donor orfood rescue operations whore-distribute food), and otheragencies including advocacy groups.Food relief is offered by faith-basedorganisations, social serviceagencies, drop-in centres,community development programs,and health centres. In 2013,Foodbank Australia estimated that60,000 people could not be assistedeach month, and these findings rangtrue for Western Australia.2

The urgent need to understandcurrent and future capacity andensure appropriate services wasexpressed at meetings withemergency relief organisations inNovember 2014. Furthermore, CFSstakeholders raised questions abouttheir capacity to meet the food andnutrition needs of their recipients. Aswell, the number of people who werehomeless was increasing in inner-cityPerth. The 2014 Vulnerability Indexfor homeless Perth people found25 per cent had diabetes, 40 per centasthma and 60 per cent had dentalhealth problems with health carecosts escalating.3

Follow up discussions with FoodBank, West Australian Council ofSocial Service, Anglicare, and theSalvation Army highlighted a range ofissues in Perth. Specifically, thecomplexities and increasing demandfor services in an environment ofreducing resources; the potential forcompetitiveness among agencies;

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changing government policies; andthe lack of information regardingrecipients’ dietary needs. There is alack of information about therelationship between andcoordination of direct services, clientawareness of services and theadequacy and appropriateness of theservices offered.

Healthway funded Curtin University incollaboration with Flinders and DeakinUniversities to define the scope andnature of CFS activities required toenable recipients to achieve adequatenutrition. Research comprised ofinventory audits of the types andadequacy of food provided, assessingrecipients’ dietary intake andperceptions of the appropriateness offood provided, as well as assessingdirect services from an organisationaland provider assessment ofeffectiveness. The target groups are:inner city Perth CFS stakeholders;direct service providers; andrecipients. To the author’s knowledgethis is the first time a systematicmapping and thorough investigationof the charitable food sector has beenundertaken in an Australian capitalcity.

Research is to be conducted in threeconsecutive parts:

A comprehensive mapping1.exercise describing the players,relationships and key functions ofthe inner-city Perth CFS.

An assessment of direct services’2.perspectives on theappropriateness and effectivenessof their services.

An assessment of the direct3.service recipients’ perspectives onthe appropriateness andeffectiveness of services and theirdietary intake and food sources.

The research findings will be used todevelop effective approaches tofeeding those people who are goingwithout food in Western Australia.The study results are expected to bereleased around December 2016.

Preliminary findings are consistentwith the initial concerns that the CFSis operating in an environment that isnot conducive to being able toadequately meet the current andfuture food and nutrition needs of

those needing food assistance. Ininner-city Perth alone, almost 6,000instances of food aid are providedeach week, and this is likely to be anunderestimate because is it difficult tocapture providers not associated withthe 17, largely faith based orphilanthropic agencies. Increasingdemand, reliance on volunteers,inconsistent donations, and unreliableor reducing funding are some of theongoing challenges for services.Currently the data are beinganalysed, but already the work hasyielded valuable insights for thedesign of a multi-pronged

intervention in the next stage. Allinvolved are eagerly awaiting thefindings and the opportunity to usethem to look for ways to improve thesituation.

Endnotes

1. Pollard CM, Savage, V, Landrigan T,Hanbury A, and Kerr D2015, Food Accessand Cost Survey, Department of Health,Perth, Western Australia.

2. Foodbank Australia 2013, End Hunger inAustralia, End Hunger Report 2013.Foodbank New South Wales.

3. Lette H, Fernihough R, Mulley 2014, PerthRegistry Week 2014 Less Homeless, RUAHResearch and Evaluation.

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Being FrankHaley Price, Marketing and Communications Manager, St Vincent de Paul Society Victoria

Every Thursday, for the past 40 years,there has been one familiar andfriendly face greeting people in needon the streets of inner-cityMelbourne: Vinnies Soup Vanvolunteer, Frank Mullins.

At 77-years-young, Frank hasn’tskipped a beat. Volunteering, in hiswords, is ‘part of my life and a realprivilege’ and the spark in his eyewhen he arrives at the Soup Vankitchen in North Melbourne is proof.

‘The first night out on the van was abit of an eye opener, to see howpeople live. It’s been over 40 yearsnow. It’s just flown,’ said Frank.

Frank is the longest serving ‘Vannie’,as they’re affectionately known, andover the years he has seen the issueof food insecurity from many angles.When the Vinnies Soup Van firststarted in 1975, with a motivatedgroup of young people at the helm,food preparation was tedious.

‘It would take hours and hours tomake the sandwiches every night,’he says.

These days there are now moreefficient and cost effective avenuesfor sourcing good food. Generousdonations from corporate partnersmeans the Vannies can provide agreater variety and quantity of foodeach night, and also saveconsiderable time preparing food.Although, some traditional legaciesof love still continue — namely, theart of making the very best soup.

‘The biggest change I have seen inmy time on the van is the impact ofTasty Trucks. They have made sucha big difference to the variety offood we serve — sandwiches, pies,pasties, chicken rolls,’ says Frank.

The Tasty Fresh Food Co (TastyTrucks) donates around $1m worth offood to the Soup Van operationevery year and has been supportingthe service for two decades, whichhas made an enormous difference tothe quality and efficiency of the foodthey serve.

The Australian foodservice industrythrows away an average of23 per cent of the food they buyfor business every year, whichgenerates more than 5.25 millionmetric tons of food waste*annually. Tasty Fresh Food Co’spartnership with Vinnies Soup Vansdirectly addresses the issue ofleftover food waste and itsassociated costs, together with aninitiative their customers are proudto support.

‘This food is very much appreciatedby the people on the street,especially in winter.’

There’s also a regular and varied flowof ‘seconds’ foods including bread,cakes, fruit and milk from other foodservice agencies. While nutritionremains a recurring point of

discussion among the volunteers, it’sa well-known fact that peopleregularly share their food and prefercalorie dense food to keep themsatiated for longer — an importantconsideration for many people whooften only have one meal a day.

‘We find that there are a lot of peopleon the street who know where otherpeople in need are and they’ll takesandwiches to them.’

Then there are people who hangback, too timid to approach theVannies or unaware that help isavailable, which indicates that there ispotentially a large portion of thepopulation still going hungry.

‘Mental illness is the main problemblocking people from accessingservices or knowing that they’reavailable. Some people also don’thave the confidence to come andapproach us for food.’

The Vannies’ helping hands arriveholding cups of hot soup andsandwiches too; but through sharedmeals and conversations, volunteerslike Frank often change lives.

‘Thinking back on my life, I started offpretty young appreciating what helpcan do for a family. We try to providecompanionship — if you haven’t gotsupport it’s very hard to survive,’he says.

As the years tick on, he’s now hopefulthat others will also makevolunteering a staple part of theirlives.

‘I’d just like to see it continue, withthe same goals that we have now —that the people on the street alwayscome first. We need new people andnew minds, people who thinkdifferently to us.’

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FoodMate by SecondBite:Paving the Way to Food SecurityThrough Hands-on Nutrition EducationNicole Vaughan, Volunteer SecondBite, Liza Barbour, Monash University, Chrystal Yam, SecondBite

IntroductionIn Australia, we have an abundance offood. The 2012 FoodWise campaignfound that up to $8 billion worth ofhousehold food is wasted every year.1

We produce more food than we needand currently export enough to feed40 million people.2 Despite this, wecontinue to face significant challengesto ensuring access to sufficient,affordable, safe and nutritious foodsfor all people living in Australia, withapproximately two million Australiansseeking emergency food reliefannually.3

SecondBite is committed to ensuringaccess to fresh, nutritious food for allpeople across Australia. They takeaction by rescuing and redistributingsurplus fresh food, buildingcommunity capacity in food skills andnutrition, and advocating for an end

to food insecurity. The experience offood insecurity is incredibly complexand requires a multi-facetedapproach to address the underlyingcauses such as low income, foodliteracy skills, social isolation andphysical access to healthy andculturally appropriate foods.

Homelessness continues to be aserious community issue and there isan increasing demand from thiscommunity for food assistance.4 Thefood bank industry in Australia hasexpanded over the last 20 years, andwhile food banks remain the leadingsolution to food poverty, their abilityto ameliorate the problem is limited.5

Isolated services for peopleexperiencing homelessness areunsustainable and of questionablevalue in the long-term.6 A moresustainable concept is one whichconsiders all services as an integralpart of mainstream activities andworks with organisations to achievemore equity, food inclusion andsocial connectedness for vulnerablegroups, including peopleexperiencing homelessness.7 By itsvery nature, food insecurity hascomplex causes, however it isintegral for community programs toaddress these underlying causes toevoke lasting and meaningfulimpacts to break the cycle.

Education Leads toEmpowermentDisadvantaged populations are oftenlacking the opportunity to engage innutrition education.8 This can increasesusceptibility to food insecurity, asdespite access to an adequate supplyof food, quality of dietary intake isessential to ensuring individuals meetnutritional needs, including thenecessary nutrients required to ensureoptimal growth early in life andprotection against chronic diseases.A lack of familiarity with basic food

preparation techniques including theability to write shopping lists, planmeals in advance, budget for food,and store and prepare food cancreate barriers to the preparation ofhealthy meals and increase moneyspent purchasing convenience meals.9

The inability to buy healthy foodand a reliance on emergency foodrelief not only has detrimentalphysical impacts on an individual;it can have significant emotionaland social impacts.

Give a man a fish and you feedhim for a day; teach a man to fishand you feed him for a lifetime.

This analogy perfectly sums up theattitude and efforts SecondBite takesto offer a more food secure future forpeople living in Australia through itsinnovative nutrition educationprogram, FoodMateTM. FoodMateaims to address the issue of foodinsecurity in Australia by buildingindividuals’ capacity to achieve foodindependence. FoodMate does thisby engaging and working alongsidea wide range of community membersand partners, including communityand welfare service providers. Byrecognising that individuals needmore than education, FoodMateconnects the dots between socialexclusion and food insecurity bycreating vital community connectionsto create long-term change.Research indicates that individualsexperiencing food insecurity areparticularly vulnerable to poornutrition outcomes due to insufficientaccess to healthy food.10

Program participants are thereforeencouraged to develop practicalfood skills and knowledge relating tofood and nutrition to in turn begintheir journey to a sustainable, foodsecure future.

A FoodMate participant captured joining inone of the educational games.

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FoodMate at Work: What is FoodMateby SecondBite?FoodMate was established bySecondBite in 2008, and has sincebeen delivered in collaboration withnumerous community organisationsthroughout Tasmania, Victoria andNew South Wales. The eight-weeknutrition program providesparticipants with access to freshnutritious food, information onbudgeting, food safety, healthyeating and recipe modification, localfood access and shopping tips.Specifically, FoodMate has three keyobjectives to support participants:

Increase post-program access to1.non-emergency sources of safe,sufficient, affordable, nutritiousand culturally acceptable food.

Improve food utilisation by2.increasing skills in cooking, foodbudgeting, shopping, foodstorage and food safety.

Create connections between3.program participants and localcommunity food programs (eg.community kitchens, communitygardens, fresh food markets) toenable ongoing support andcapacity building with foodaccess and food utilisation.

Each week FoodMate participantscontribute to a two to three hoursession where they work together toprepare two healthy dishes, engagein an education session andactivities to reinforce health-promoting messages. Throughoutthe program, the delivery teamencourage connections with localaffordable food outlets such ascommunity kitchens, gardens, andfresh food retailers, and referparticipants to additional supportprograms to develop social supportfor participants and nurturelongevity of the program’s impact.FoodMate participants areencouraged to prepare their ownmeals outside of the sessions usingfresh ingredients from the weeklyhampers.

Why Did SecondBiteDevelop FoodMate?A range of initiatives exist inAustralia which endeavour toalleviate food insecurity. SecondBiteacknowledges that not only does

healthy food need to be availableand accessible, individuals need thenecessary skills to create delicious,healthy, safe and affordable meals totruly develop sustainable foodsecurity. FoodMate was developedto empower individuals to gainaccess to a nutritious food supplythat is long-term, both nutritionallyand culturally appropriate, and thatpromotes human dignity. Other localprograms may be delivered ininsufficient timeframes and aretherefore unable to generatesignificant outcomes.11 FoodMate

was developed with an aim to notonly develop critical food skills, butalso equip individuals with thenecessary social connections toallow participants to continue ontheir path to food security after theconclusion of the program.

Who is FoodMate For?The program is designed to developthe food independence of peopleexperiencing or at risk of foodinsecurity. Until recently, FoodMatehas been delivered with severalagencies supporting young people

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experiencing homelessness,however the reach of FoodMate hasexpanded to include organisationssupporting newly arrived migrants,refugees and asylum seekers,community members experiencingmental illness and rooming houseresidents. In addition to this,SecondBite maintains a partnershipwith VACCHO (Victorian AboriginalCommunity Controlled HealthOrganisation) who are piloting thecurrent education materials foradaptation and apply a cultural lensfor delivery within Aboriginalcommunity organisations.

How Can CommunityAgencies Get Involved inFoodMate?Food insecurity is a major barrier forclients of community and welfareservices: with approximately80 per cent of welfare agenciesassisting their clients with foodprovision.12 The evaluation ofFoodMate to date has revealed thatthe program is an effective tool forcommunity caseworkers to engagewith their clients. Most commonly,SecondBite trains caseworkers andstaff from community organisationsto deliver the program with theirclients, thereby integrating theprogram into existing case-management services. Once theone-day FoodMate start-up trainingis complete, agencies are equippedwith all the necessary resources,knowledge and education materialsto deliver the program with clients.

What can FoodMateParticipants Expect toAchieve?With the support and guidance ofMonash University, FoodMate hasan embedded evaluation frameworkto engage participants and theFoodMate delivery team to reportprogram outcomes and evaluationfindings. Current findings haveindicated that the FoodMateprogram moves far beyond merefood provision to actually enablingindividuals to experience long-termfood independence. Programparticipants are effectivelyempowered and inspired topractice healthy cooking practices,food budgeting, label reading andfood safety. Furthermore,participants experiencinghomelessness have reported areduced reliance on emergency

food relief up to two years post-completion. Not only doparticipants experience greaterfood independence following thecompletion of the program, a rangeof other positive outcomes havebeen observed including:

practical nutrition skills; an•

improved ability and confidenceto read food labels and improvedability to prepare healthy mealsusing more diverse foodsincreased consumption of fruits•

and vegetablesimproved outcomes from case•

management servicesincreased ability to engage in•

social situations and establishsocial connectionsincreased willingness to take part•

in community activitiesdecreased dependence on•

emergency food relief andincreased access to local sourcesof non-emergency foodgreater confidence and•

motivation to continue cookingbeyond the eight-week program.

How is FoodMate Funded?SecondBite is a non-profitorganisation, relying solely ondonations and a supportive team ofvolunteers to work towards itsmission. Every day, the criticalsupport received from partners,food donors and financialsupporters, assists SecondBite tomove closer to achieving anAustralia where everyone enjoyssufficient access to healthy nutritiousmeals. One of the greatestchallenges SecondBite currentlyfaces is a lack of capacity, in terms ofhuman resources and funds, toadequately respond to communitydemand for FoodMate.

ConclusionFood security is a basic human rightand is strongly linked to the overallhealth and wellbeing of ourAustralian population. According tothe World Health Organisation(2011), food security is built onthree pillars; sufficient access tofood on a consistent basis,adequate resources to obtainappropriate foods and sufficientknowledge surrounding basicnutrition care, food preparation andsanitation.13 SecondBite workstowards empowering individuals toimprove their food securitylong-term through FoodMate by

addressing all three domains;increasing immediate access tonutritious food through rescuedfood, improving vital food skills andnutrition knowledge, and byfacilitating social connections topromote community inclusion.

Community organisations andfinancial donors can register theirinterest by contactingfoodmate@secondbite.org or theSecondBite Nutrition Programs team— 1800 263 283.

Endnotes

1. DoSomething 2012, ‘Australians nowthrowing out $8 billion of edible food everyyear’, Media Release, Katoomba, NewSouth Wales, viewed 5 March 2016,http://foodwise.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/8-Billion-of-Food-Waste-RELEASE-5.pdf.

2. Lawrence G, Richards C and Lyons, K 2012,‘Food security in Australia in an era ofneoliberalism, productivism and climatechange,’ Journal of Rural Studies, vol. 29,pp.30–39.

3. Foodbank 2014, Foodbank Hunger Report2014, Foodbank Australia Limited, viewed28 February 2016, www.foodbank.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Foodbank-Hunger-Report-2014.pdf.

4. Lord Mayor’s Charitable Foundation 2014,Melbourne Vital Signs 2014: Snapshot ofMelbourne, Melbourne, Victoria, viewed 25February 2016, http://www.lmcf.org.au/vitalsigns

5. Booth S and Whelan, J 2014, ‘Hungry forchange: the food banking industry inAustralia’, British Food Journal, vol. 116,no. 9, pp.1392–1404.

6. ibid.

7. Farmar-Bowers Q 2015, ‘Finding ways toimprove Australia’s food security situation’,Agriculture, vol. 5, no. 2, pp.286–312.

8. Burns C, Bentley R, Thornton L andKavanagh A 2011, ‘Reduced food accessdue to a lack of money, inability to lift andlack of access to a care for food shopping:a multilevel study in Melbourne, Victoria’,Public Health Nutrition, vol. 14, no. 6,pp.1017–1023.

9. Rosier K 2011, ‘Food insecurity in Australia:What is it, who experiences it and how canchild and family services support familiesexperiencing it?’ CAFCA Practice Sheet,Australian Institute of Family Studies,viewed 25 February 2016,https://aifs.gov.au/ cfca/ publications/ food-insecurity-australia-what-it-who-experiences-it.

10. Burns C 2011, op cit.

11. King L 2006, ‘The role of health promotion:between global thinking and local action,’Health Promotion Journal of Australia,vol. 17, no. 3, pp.196–199.

12. Foodbank 2012 op cit.

13. World Health Organisation 2011, FoodSecurity, Geneva, Switzerland, viewed 20February 2016 http://www.who.int/ trade/glossary/story028/en/.

44

Opinion 1Livia CarusiGeneral Manager, Membership and Development and

Danusia KaskaSoup Van Program Operations Manager

The Brazilian Roman CatholicArchbishop Dom Helder Camarasaid the aphorism, ‘When I givefood to the poor, they call me asaint. When I ask why they are poor,they call me a communist’

The St Vincent de Paul SocietyVictoria acknowledges thecontributions made to this editionof Parity, most notably the sharedexperiences and courage of two ofour program clients as well as along standing ‘Vannies’ volunteer.The wisdom of the ‘lived

experience’ is after all the passionwhich ignites our hearts and ourconscience towards a more just andcompassionate society ensuringthat fundamental human rights,including the right to shelter,employment and food is afforded.(The Universal Declaration ofHuman Rights: Article 25)

From its humble beginnings in Francein 1833, the St Vincent de PaulSociety was established in Australia(Melbourne) in 1854. Like so manyother faith based organisations,inspired by the gospel of Jesus Christ,the Society was established inresponse to the growing social andeconomic divide of its day. Fastforward to 1975, responding to agrowing food insecurity issue in theinner city of Melbourne, St Vincent dePaul Society established its first of anumber of soup van operations.

Since its inception, a great deal ofknowledge and wisdom has beengained on the issue of food insecurity.These lessons relate to the practicalside of service delivery such as foodquality, handling, compliance andcultural requirements, as well as theimpact of the social component thatthe ‘sharing of a meal’ brings to thelife of an individual as well as to acollective community. For many, thelatter is often more important thanthe offered meal.

Our ‘Vannies’, often share with us thatpeople yearn for social connectionand interaction with others withwhom they have built closerelationships and shared their lifestories. This is a social time for them,a place where they feel safe in atrusted environment, where theydon’t have to hide or ‘just survive’.It is a time when they are treatedwith dignity and respect andhonoured by the ‘Vannies’.

The food served is simple,home-made soup, sandwiches andhot and cold drinks prepared by ourvery dedicated volunteers.

Who are we serving? Over time manyof us have witnessed the changingface of people experiencinghomelessness or at risk ofhomelessness, and likewise thischange has and continues to be thecase for our program. Once confinedto responding primarily to single,older men in the inner city ofMelbourne, today, we offer a responseto families, single women, olderpeople, as well as those who areworking but are unable to afford foodbecause their incomes are too low.

While there is a need, ourcommitment to serve will remain inthis space. While there remains oneperson living in poverty, unable tofeed themselves or their families, orwho are disconnected and excludedfrom community, the St Vincent dePaul Society will continue to standalongside the vulnerable andmarginalised and ask ‘Why are theypoor’ while advocating for a just andcompassionate society for all.

45

Our Vannies StoryOperating for 40 years,•

starting in 1975.

There are over 1,300 dedicated•

volunteers who give generouslyof their time seven days aweek, 365 days of the year,rain, hail or shine!

There are over 250,000 meals•

served to people experiencinghardship every year

Everyone is welcome,•

regardless of gender, age orwhere they call home.

The International Covenant onEconomic, Social and Cultural Rights(ICESCR) asserts that all people havethe right to ‘an adequate standard ofliving, including adequate food’, aswell as the ‘fundamental right to befree from hunger’. This rightencompasses three dimensions:availability, accessibility, andadequacy — both in terms ofnutrition and food safety.

As a signatory to the ICESCR,Australia is bound to do everythingpossible to guarantee adequatenutrition for its citizens. The reality onthe ground however, is that many ofthose experiencing homelessness inAustralia experience challenges everysingle day in realising their right toadequate food.

In a post-Industrial world, food inAustralia is primarily available notdirectly from the land, but from thirdparties — producers and retailers.Consequently, access to food requiresaccess to money, something that themajority of those experiencinghomelessness in Australia simply donot have. Even relying on emergencyrelief, food availability is still notassured, with the 2014 FoodbankHunger Report finding that almost

600,000 Australians seeking foodrelief each month are unable toobtain assistance.

The insufficient stock of affordablesocial housing often means that themajority of available income must go tocovering accommodation related costs,leaving little to no money for food.

Those living without access toappropriate food storage orpreparation facilities are forced to relyeither on purchasing prepared food,which is usually both more expensiveand less nutritionally adequate or, onfree food or meals which frequentlyhave limitations in hours of operationsand are often not available onweekends.

A lack of access to adequate,nutritious food can have far-reachingconsequences, many of which canfurther compound inequality andcontribute to ongoing homelessness.In the short term, this can manifest asincreased tiredness and stress, anddifficulty in concentrating andfunctioning. Over the medium to longterm, food insecurity and poornutrition places the individual atconsiderable risk for chronic disease,and is likely to see individualsrequiring more hospitalisations andother medical interventions. This canin turn prevent the rebuilding ofpeople’s lives including returning toemployment and social participation.

However, it is not just in bellies andbodies that the consequences can befelt. Research has found that the processof eating meals together can bring withit a number of psychosocial benefits,presenting opportunities forsocialisation, learning and support. Formany people experiencinghomelessness, the solitary nature of theiraccess to and consumption of food canresult in further social exclusion.

Fortunately, there are many excellentinitiatives designed to combat theconsequences of food insecurityfaced by people experiencinghomelessness. For example, the CaféMeals Programs brokered bycohealth, which aims to both reducefood insecurity and promote socialinclusion by facilitating access tosubsidised meals in mainstream localcafés. Under the program,participants receive a card, which theycan use at participating cafes topurchase a nutritious meal and drinkat a subsidised rate (typically two tothree dollars). In this way, theprogram empowers participants bygiving them choice and control overwhere, when and what they will eat,and enables them to participate incommunity life — thus moving awayfrom food security as emergencyrelief towards food security buildingsocial inclusion and communityengagement. Qualitative evaluationsof the program have found it to beeffective in improving food accessand creating community cohesion,and that delivery of the program alsohelped to build relationships betweenvulnerable and marginalisedcommunities, local government,community health organisations, andprivate business. 

There is no question that in a nationas prosperous as Australia, it is withinour power to address the underlyingcauses of both homelessness andfood insecurity, and eliminating bothshould be something we continue toaspire too. Until that ambition isrealised, initiatives such as the CaféMeals Programs will continue to playan essential role in helping vulnerableAustralians — especially thoseexperiencing homelessness — tomaintain better physical andpsychosocial wellbeing throughaccess to nutritious food andsocialisation opportunities.

46

Opinion 2Lyn MorgainChief Executive Officer, cohealth

47

Homelessness in Australia: An IntroductionHomelessness in Australia: An Introduction provides thought-provoking, up-to-dateinformation about the characteristics of the homeless population and contemporary policydebates.

Leading researchers and advocates from across Australia have come together tocontribute their expertise and experience to produce a foundational resource that will setthe benchmark for the future analysis of homelessness. Editors, Chris Chamberlain, GuyJohnson and Catherine Robinson are all recognised experts in the field.

Homelessness in Australia: An Introduction is published by New South Press in associationwith the Victorian Council to Homeless Persons, one of Australia’s leading peakhomelessness advocacy bodies.

Homelessness in Australia: An Introduction contains 14 chapters.

Part 1 includes: an essay on homelessness policy from the start of the nineteenth centuryto recent times; a chapter measuring mobility in and out of the homeless population and apiece on the causes of homelessness.

Part 2 is about contemporary policy issues and discussions. It has chapters on: the debateabout definition and counting; genderand homelessness; young people; olderpeople; Indigenous homelessness;domestic and family violence; peoplewith complex needs and the justicesystem; trauma as both a cause andconsequence of homelessness; andpeople who are long-term or‘chronically’ homeless.

Part 3 includes a piece on the ‘failure ofthe housing system’ and a chapter on‘reforming the service system’.

People will find the essays inHomelessness in Australia bothilluminating and challenging.

This important new book will berequired reading for all peoplecommitted to ending homelessnessin Australia.

Order FormI would like to buy a copy or copies of“Homelessness in Australia: An Introduction”

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$65.00 per copy for non-membersplus $10.00 postage (up to 2copies*)

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