Bradford and Airedale PCT ... Food safety campaign

Summary:

A joint initiative with Bradford Council's Environmental Health Team and Bradford Health Protection Unit and Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, to reduce the incidence of food poisoning contracted in the home among the under fives.

Bradford Council's Health Protection Team initially approached Sure Start Barkerend because they had identified a higher incidence of children suffering with gastro-enteritis in the South Asian community. Objectives were as follows;

  • to empower mothers in the community through peer education
  • to produce a learning pack which is transferable to other areas of the city, region or country
  • to give out a strong and accurate food message to the community
  • to influence custom and practice of food preparation across a widely varied community.

Action:

  • Sure Start's programme identified a group of local women to act as peer educators and provided them with the appropriate background knowledge (food safety certificated training provided by Health Protection Team).
  • a pre-intervention questionnaire was designed
  • the completed questionnaires were used to inform the teaching pack
  • a teaching pack was developed by the team and used by the Sure Start project for several sessions so that we could see how well it worked. Various modifications were made to the pack and it is now finally ready for launching beyond the Sure Start project.

Outcome:

  • teaching pack that can be used across all communities
  • a group of women (10) have gained a Food Safety Certificate.
  • some of the women were involved in helping to deliver the training
  • three women were part of the working group
  • tapes were produced in Urdu and Bangla to accompany the training
  • monthly sessions are held at the sure start children's centre using the pack.

Additional

Bradford's Health Protection Team in partnership with Bradford Teaching Hospitals Trust and Sure Start Barkerend submitted a proposal to the Food Standards Agency to obtain funding for this project. We were one of 10 successful bids throughout the country. This project has also fulfilled one of our service delivery targets.

Contact:

Kath Broscombe and Caroline Cox

Sure Start Barkerend Children's Centre

365 Barkerend Road, Bradford BD3 8QX

01274 437306 kath.broscombe@bradford.gov.uk