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Good Food Training for London
FREE training to increase the levels of healthy and sustainable food provided by public sector caterers.
Courses designed to suit all levels of skills, meeting your needs in areas such as:
- local or organic procurement;
- healthy eating guidance and nutrition standards;
- preparing and presenting healthy food;
- incorporating seasonality into menus and ordering procedures;
- waste minimisation and energy management.
The content of the courses is flexible, to incorporate needs and priorities of each institution. We welcome
suggestions of skills you feel your staff need.
What and why?
GCDA (Greenwich Co-operative Development Agency) has been contracted by the London Development Agency to provide
free training to increase the levels of healthy and sustainable food provided by public sector caterers.
The aim of this project is to increase the training available to the public sector, to improve the availability
of healthy, sustainable food in schools, hospitals, care homes and prisons in London. The project builds on the
new Government Standards for Schools and Care Homes and aligns with one of the priority actions of the Mayor’s
London Food Strategy launched in 2006, the Strategy identifies food preparation and cooking for public
consumption as a high priority and recommends that it be conducted to the highest possible standards for
school children, hospital patients, prisoners, the homeless and the elderly.
The Training Programmes provided will include:
- NVQlevel2
- Professional cookery
- Multi-skilled Hospitality ServicesFood Hygiene
- Open College - accredited Healthy Eating and Nutrition courses, leading to becoming fully-trained Cookery Club Tutors.
- Short courses in (for instance): Customer Care, Food Presentation Skills, Knife Skills, Menu Planning, Nutrition and Food Procurement (including Costing, Local & Seasonal Sourcing) – available to take as a set or individually, with a minimum of 6 hours participation.
- A five-day programme in Healthy Eating and Nutrition
Who is it for?
The Project is for all London Boroughs. We consider all those concerned with the public sector food supply to be
crucial to the eventual delivery of healthy, sustainable food, from suppliers through to the recipients of the
food themselves- patients, pupils and care home residents, and the staff of all those institutions.
Education Sector: catering contractors and cooks, Local Authorities, teaching staff, including meal time
supervisors; parents, carers & governors.
Healthcare Sector: all hospital and residential care staff. Catering contractors and managers, cooks, Patient
Liaison Groups, dieticians and catering nutritionists. Finance directors, suppliers or matrons.
Providers of food to prisoners and staff of HM prison service.
When?
The Training is being launched in October 2007 and will run until September 2009. Start dates and duration
of the courses are negotiable throughout that timescale.
Where?
The location of most of the courses is flexible. Most programmes could be delivered in a venue local to the
institution involved, possibly in-site if preferred, and at appropriate times to suit participants’ requirements.
Contact:
To find out more or get involved, please contact:
Publications
For an evaluation of Good Food Training for London please see "What we have learned".
Sustain has produced a number of publications detailing the benefits of introducing sustainability to public
sector kitchens. Most recently, the Sustainable
Food in Care Catering briefing paper, produced with the National Association of Care Caterers, sets out why
care homes should increase the proportion of sustainable food they serve and outlines the main obstacles to and
opportunities for doing this.
The Good Food on the Public Plate Project has produced the interim report Getting More Sustainable Food into
London’s Hospitals: Can it be Done? And is it Worth It? which shows how hospitals can contribute to happier
patients and staff, a better environment and more business for local farms and food companies, just by changing
the food they buy and serve. The GFPP project has also produced a Manual for Sustainability in Public Sector
Food and Catering which provides guidance, a toolkit and directory to ease interested parties into the legislation
and logistics of getting healthier, more sustainable food into public sector kitchens.
To order paper copies, or download PDF's of the Sustain reports mentioned above, please see the 'Good Food On the
Public Plate' section of the Sustain publicatons catalogue.
The Partners
- Greenwich Cooperative Development Agency was established in 1982 as a social enterprise support organisation, has a successful and well-established partnership with the London Borough of Greenwich, Greenwich TPCT, and the voluntary and community sector organisations. GCDA is one of the 5 Healthy Greenwich Network partners and has been delivering the Greenwich Community Food Initiative (GCFI) in partnership with Greenwich TPCT which has been active in local and regional Food and Health Partnerships. GCFI has successfully established and run Community Food Co-ops, Catering Companies, Food Growing Projects and Cookery Clubs. The Greenwich Community Food Initiative has won GCDA a Caroline Walker Trust Award.
- Sustain –The Alliance for Better Food and Farming. Launched in 1999, Sustain is a registered charity and Company Limited by Guarantee. We advocate food and agriculture policies and practices that enhance the health and welfare of people and animals, improve their working and living environment, enrich society and culture and promote equity. Sustain represents around 100 national public interest organisations working at international, national, regional and local level.
- Greenwich Teaching Primary Care Trust (GTPCT) was established in 2001, becoming a Teaching Primary Care Trust in April 2003. Their mission is to work alongside, and provide leadership to, a range of partners in order to develop innovative and imaginative approaches aimed at improving the overall health of people in Greenwich and radically reducing health inequalities. GTPCT has been instrumental in implementing local initiatives in healthy eating as part of a healthier lifestyle to develop the skills required to prepare a healthy diet using affordable, easily accessible ingredients with particular attention to reducing fat, salt and sugar content.
- Lewisham College - Lewisham College has been leading the way and sharing good practice with a Pathfinder CoVE (Centre of Vocational Excellence) in Hospitality since 2004. The College aims to produce appropriately qualified and skilled workers with excellent employment and career prospects that meet the needs of the local economy. They have worked with Jamie Oliver's Fifteen Foundation and Paramount Restaurants (a group including some of the UK 's most well known restaurant chains - Chez Gerard, Bertorelli, Livebait, Cafe Fish and Caffe Uno) and in the past have worked with Gordon Ramsay, Angela Hartnett and many other leading chefs and organisations in the hospitality industry.
This project is funded by the London Development Agency
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