Equality and Social Justice Committee

I can start, if you like. So, the demand just isn't going away. It's going up, if anything. As an organisation ourselves that supports other organisations, we are finding that we are getting more and more requests for support. In addition, the organisations that we are working with are also asking for more food. So, the organisations that we are already working with are asking for more food, and we are always having more organisations asking us for food as well.

FareShare UK did a survey back in September-October time, and it found that 96 per cent of our community food members in south Wales were saying that they had had an increase in demand since January the previous year. So, that shows that almost every organisation that we are working with has seen that increase in demand.

So, are people actually being turned away?

I don't know if people are being turned away. I know that we, and they, are finding it difficult to meet the demand that is there, and that demand is growing constantly.

Okay. Who are the main people who are using these services? We know, obviously, that anybody with children, anybody with a disability, and also private renters whose housing benefit isn't covering the cost of their rent, are in a desperate situation. Is that a reasonable summary of who you are seeing?

I think that it's across the board. There are all sorts of organisations. We work with all sorts of organisations. We work with everyone from homeless hostels, women's refuges, through to pantries and community kitchens. So, we work with a whole host of organisations, and I think that demand is going up across the board. But the highest levels of demand are within groups—. The highest demand groups are families with children, older people and lone parents. Those are the three highest groups that our community groups are saying that that they've seen an increase in demand from.

Okay. Robbie Davison or Jen Griffiths.

I'd just add that there's a kind of new poverty going on. I don't know if I put in the evidence that we've submitted that we are noticing about a 20 per cent increase in people wanting good food services. What's been interesting, and almost alarming at the same time, is that there are people now coming through the system who have never been in need of food aid or, if you like, poverty services at all. Therefore, they don't know what to do while they are in them. So, for the first time, they are trying to make do with maybe visits to a food bank, maybe visits to a pantry, maybe relying on services like us. But, because it's the first time that they have been involved, they've needed to get involved in services like ours and others. The issue for them, when you're talking to them and you're meeting them for the first time, is that there's a panic—there's a real panic—that they don't know what to do next because they've never been in the situation before. That's coming through now.

Okay, thank you. Jen Griffiths.

Thank you. Flintshire is fairly rural. We've got lots of communities that don't have access to the main town centres—we've got five county towns in Flintshire. And what we are noticing, as Robbie's just said, it's people who've never accessed the system. So, we've got support hubs where we offer advice and guidance, but people are coming in who won't access the benefits system because they wouldn't qualify and they don't meet those criteria. However, they're really struggling to pay their bills. It's eat or heat, feed your children or feed yourself, and it's almost like there's a squeezed middle who are missed by the benefits system because they simply wouldn't qualify. However, because of the cost of living, they're just really struggling to cope, and it's certainly something we've seen through our hub models in Flintshire. People we've never bumped into before are accessing services and trying to find ways to alleviate their situation.

Given that there is clearly so much need, how are organisations managing to meet that need? Sarah, you said that you weren't aware of anybody being turned away, but if the public doesn't support your organisations, then the situation could become a whole lot worse, couldn't it?

Yes, I think they are feeling it—the organisations that are supporting people that are in this situation are starting to feel it themselves. They stepped up to the plate during the pandemic, they've been working really hard all the way through the pandemic to help through that, and then straight off the back of that we're into this cost-of-living crisis. So, I think the organisations are finding it hard. They are feeling that demand. I've got some stats somewhere if I can just find them. They're being hit by the cost-of-living crisis themselves as well, because obviously their bills are going up, the cost of food is going up, wages are starting to go up as well, so the organisations themselves are starting to feel the impact of this as an organisation as well.

Robbie.

It's interesting, because the pressure on, if you like, the third sector is continuing to grow and increase, and it's important to note that. What we've been attempting to do as an organisation is—. We have got a completely different model. We've got a commercial model running alongside a social model, and we are trying desperately to move people away from charity alone and to get them to be contributors to their own well-being. And by that I mean we offer four weeks' worth of support that is free to access, which is meals for a week, but after four weeks we start to charge. But we start to charge at a subsidised rate. So, for four weeks, we charge £10 and people get £40 worth of food, and then for the following four weeks—so, it's 12 weeks in total—they pay £15. The reason this is important is because we are using our profits to subsidise the food, but what we are actually asking people to do is to take part in looking after themselves, moving them away from an over-reliance on charity and getting them back into thinking about their own well-being, at a cost that they can afford. Really, really important—good food has to be affordable, otherwise good food will just not be on offer to people.

Thank you. Sioned Williams wanted to follow up on one of your comments. Sioned.

Thank you, Chair. I just wanted to follow up on a comment made by Sarah from FareShare regarding the increase in demand. In the written evidence, 75 institutions on the waiting list and 42 organisations—[Inaudible.]—in specific areas of Wales—[Inaudible.]

Those groups are primarily in south-east Wales, because that's where the majority of our members are. [Interruption.] Sorry.

Sorry, Sarah. We just have to take a halt for a moment because we've lost Sioned. Are you able to hear what Sarah Germain's starting to say?

Yes, I can hear.

Excellent. We lost you momentarily. Sarah, please do continue.

Chair, sorry. Could I just raise a point, which is that I'm having a problem hearing Rob's microphone? I'm not sure if anybody else is having a problem with that microphone.

Well, I think the technicians can raise the volume on that mike.

There is a red light here and it's just gone—

No, don't touch—

I won't touch it.

I think that means you're on.

Okay.

Can you hear Robbie now, Jane?

Can you hear me? Great.

Okay, that's fine. Sarah, back to you.

Yes. So, those 75 organisations are across south-east Wales, because that's the majority of where we are. There is another waiting list in north Wales of about 10 organisations up there, and they're across the board. Yes, that's where the—. Yes.

Okay. Thank you. I saw Jane next, I think, and then Altaf.

Yes, I just wanted to ask what's the main reason that adults approach you. We've heard that pensioners and single parents do access your services, but what are the main reasons? Is it because they're on benefits or because they're not being paid enough in employment to afford food? What's the main reason? Thank you.

So, again, I think there's a variety of reasons, and some of those reasons have changed. It's not just people that are on benefits anymore; a lot of people, as other people have said today, are that squeezed middle—those people that aren't on benefits but are now struggling because the cost of living has risen. They used to be able to cope on what they were earning, but they're now starting to struggle because the cost of living started to rise. And I think the majority of our charities are saying that they're starting to see people for the first time again—a similar theme that's come out before. The reasons behind that, the majority of them are coming to them and asking for food, but there are other things that they're asking for—for help with fuel bills, help with transport costs. There are all sorts of different reasons that they're going to them.

Okay. Altaf Hussain.

I was curious about the type of subsidised food that is supplied door-to-door at a very reduced cost. What type of food is it? Is it balanced and does it contain sugar and salt? Does it do all the breakfast and two meals? Is it chilled or frozen, because, effectively, how they are trying to, you know, warm their food, and other things? So, that was not clear in their report, and I'd be grateful if you'd let me know about the facts of this or how it is supplied.

Robbie Davidson, Altaf wanted to know what type of food was being delivered in the mobile shops?

There's a mix. There are cook-at-home meals for people who can actually cook the meals from scratch at home, and the focus is on the evening meal, but the focus is also on staple goods. So, for instance, in the meal box that we provide, if people choose the meals—. And it's important to say that people can choose, so every week we contact and they contact us, and they're selecting from a menu of meals. Once they've selected the meals they've chosen that they can cook at home, then we deliver recipes and the ingredients to do that, and then the staple goods are the milk, the eggs and the bread, and so on.

If people are struggling to cook at home—and our experience is that most if not all people, even when they are struggling with utilities, can get access to a microwave at some point—we deliver in ready meals. So, as a comparator, I would draw your attention to Tesco Finest ready meals or Marks and Spencer ready meals, and the quality of the meals that we provide are on that basis. Every meal is nutritionally balanced, all of the meals are signed off by a dietician, and we have a bank of really qualified chefs who bring those meals together. Just to be accurate, we model all of our meal supply on the top 10 meal choices that people naturally go to, to make sure that they fit with family lives.

Okay. Thank you for that. Before we dive into further information about food, can I bring in Sarah Murphy, just to identify a little bit more information about how this could be done differently?

Yes. So, quite an open question, so it would be really good to get your thoughts on this. So, for all of you: to what extent has cost-of-living support provided by the Welsh and UK Governments helped the households that you are supporting, and how long lasting have those impacts of support been? Whoever wants to go first. Sorry.

Jen Griffiths.

Thank you. I think the Government schemes have been really useful, whether they're Welsh Government or UK Government. I think the fuel schemes in particular, where they've moved away from people who are entitled to support and to just helping households, has been really, really useful. We had a tenancy hardship grant scheme during COVID, which was designed to support people who weren't accessing benefits but had a shortfall and were struggling to pay their rent. Unfortunately, the grant conditions with that were so tight that the take-up was really low across all 22 local authorities. It was a really good scheme in principle, but the criteria were so tight, we had lots of money, but we just couldn't support people through that criteria. So, that kind of scheme would be really useful, again, to support people who wouldn't necessarily be able to access the benefits.

From a Flintshire perspective, our discretionary housing payment—we pay way above the Department for Work and Pensions contribution; we have done for a number of years, but we've seen an unprecedented increase in that, alongside huge pressure on homelessness and temporary accommodation, and it's all one big picture, really. And we are seeing people accessing temporary accommodation and homelessness services who wouldn't traditionally have fit that model. So, it's lots and lots of pressure for everybody. I think the grant schemes, certainly in the last 18 months, I would say, are significantly better, because they're much more broad and they move out of that eligibility criteria. And, in Flintshire, we've had an excellent take-up and we've marketed, and I think most of the other local authorities have as well. A little tiny bit more lead-in time would be useful—and we have turned all of the schemes around on a sixpence, because we've had to, and, as I say, we've had really good take-up.

I think the uniform grant scheme as well, the extension of it across the extended years has been really useful for us, and again, we've had a really good take-up. So, we're pushing the take-up from a local authority and a partner perspective, and I think what's helping around the hub models is that we're arming everybody with the information about all of the support schemes. So, anybody who's prepared to listen to us, we talk and we join things together. So, our support hub model, we take that out with us as well, so as our partner teams or third sector teams are out and about in the community, they're armed with all the information, and that's really key as well. Certainly, with the mobile shop, that's been a phenomenal take-up in those communities, and people are pre-ordering from there now. So, going back to Robbie's point: people want to pay; people don't want to have to rely on charity, and for us, it's about getting that model right so that we can support those people who are struggling currently. The food dynamic is really important, because if people are hungry, they're not going to be able to concentrate and cope, and you know yourself, if you're hungry, you can't think about anything else other than, 'I'm hungry'. So, combining all of those services together, the people who access the services are just—. It's such a broad brush. They might be lonely, isolated, struggling—all of those things that I think we mentioned earlier. Recovery from the pandemic has never really been dealt with, because we've lurched straight into another crisis. So, what we're bumping into is a combination of all of that.

Thank you so much. Who would like to come in next?

Yes—

Sarah, if you are going to come in next, I was just going to ask you as well at the same time—. You said in your written evidence that the effectiveness of support schemes in reaching the intended recipients appears to be variable. So, it would also be very helpful to hear, based on your experience, which schemes have been most effective and which ones have also worked less well.

Okay. So, you're asking about how the support has helped. The evidence that I've given you is based on feedback that we've had from our community food members, so I can only relay to you what they've relayed to me. I'm one step removed from the front line, so to speak. Yes, they were saying that it has been variable. I think what they were saying was that the support has been vital and it has made a difference, but as with all of these things, it has never been quite enough, and also a number of people who they were expecting to have taken some of those schemes up haven't necessarily taken them up, from the evidence that they've given back to us. So, it's not always getting out to everybody who might be eligible for it. Those were the kinds of things they were saying. And also, a really big theme—and I think this has been in the news over the last few weeks as well—was about the issue of prepayment meters and the impact that that has on the amount of support and the effectiveness of that support as well. So, I think it has been—.

And I think also there is a bit around the fact that the Welsh Government have been helping third sector organisations as well. There has been support that has gone out to them through grants, and so forth, to allow them to be able to provide services. And I think that really came through as well, how vital the third sector have been in supporting people through this and how vital the services that they provide are, because it's not just about food. Most of the organisations we work with are doing so much more than food; they are trying to give advice, make sure that people get the help that they want, they're providing those loneliness and isolation services for older people so that they can come and have a meal together, rather than just heating something up at home. All of those things, I think, have been really vital in giving people the tools and the resilience to move forward on some of this as well.

That's really interesting. Thank you very much. And finally, Robbie.

Just to join both commentaries, really. Jen has mentioned in detail how some of the benefits have been rolled out, but I wouldn't mind coming back to something earlier in the evidence, and this is the difference between people who are hardened to poverty—. So, we're on the front line every single week. So, for people who are hardened to poverty, this is just something else happening to them. This is another wave of austerity. This is the way it's being viewed: it's just more austerity, told slightly differently. Whereas people who are new to poverty, the people who are struggling right on the edge and are just about to come over or are falling over, for them, it's really scary, because they do not know how to cope.

Now, interestingly, I think one of the things where there's a gap, and we've talked about it in Flintshire, is that some of the services are not ready for these people who are new to the poverty dynamic. They're used to dealing with the hardened people who have been in poverty for a long time and in many ways, are coping with this new layer of struggle. But, it's incumbent on us all to try to find ways to get to the people who are just falling into the poverty trap. I say it with some action, really, because these are not small numbers of people, these are large numbers of people who are actually falling into the poverty gap, and they are not able to cope currently. And it's an important factor.

And just to clarify, then, you would put that down to the cost of living, the various different things that are going up, costing more. Is that what you would say is tipping people into that poverty, or are there other issues?

No, it's absolutely that. And interestingly, all of us are about to fall into a new wave of heat and eat, and it's going to affect us all when the subsidy disappears, and people are not ready for this. People are struggling so badly right now that there’s nothing else to give, and these are people who are hard-working—hard-working with dependent children—and they really, really start to struggle and then here comes the next wave. We’re not ready.

Thank you very much. Thank you, Chair.

Okay, just before we move on, Jen, one of our colleagues, Jack Sargeant, has been particularly vocal about people being forcibly disconnected from their electricity and put onto prepayment meters without their permission. So, is this something that’s been particular to Flintshire, or—? How have Flintshire council responded to this activity?

I don't have that information directly.

Okay.

But I do know that it has happened in Flintshire, and I’ve had that information from the various support services and people who are accessing the support services. The prepayment meter is another evidence of a poverty premium, if you like. It’s a bit like the prepayment meters cost more, but you don’t have them unless you’ve got no money, so that doesn’t make any sense. And it's a bit like your local—. I talked about Flintshire being quite rural, and your local Tesco Express is more expensive than your Tesco in town, and you can’t access your Aldi and all of those cheaper supermarkets. It’s like a poverty premium and I think the prepaid meters are just another example of that.

In terms of poverty, we talk about poverty all of the time, and I think most of us have got fixed ideas in our mind about what poverty means; how do you classify that somebody is in poverty? And I think most of us would think, ‘Well, the benefit system is kind of around where that benchmark is’, and that boundary is being pushed all of the time, and we’re seeing that more and more for people who have always been up to date with all of their bills, and now they’re not, but they’re still working as hard as they’ve always worked, but it doesn’t meet all of their expenditure now, and the prepayment meters are just another example of when somebody who’s been struggling and can’t pay their bill going onto the premium rate through the prepayment meter.

Thank you. Moving on, can I call Ken Skates?

Thank you, Chair. Can I ask about tackling food poverty in the current climate, and begin by asking how effective you think Welsh Government is being; how effective their interventions have been in tackling food poverty as part of the cost-of-living crisis?

Who wants to go first?

I don't mind going first.

Robbie.

I can draw a conclusion from the last couple of years—so the last three/four years, and I can make a direct comparison to what was going on in England. I would say that Welsh Government have been far more progressive with their approach to trying to tackle food poverty, and my experience has been that being able to talk directly to Welsh Government is easy; a lot easier than it would ever be in England, so, that’s praise that I’d like to pass on. But I think interestingly, it’s also how quickly the support and the funds come out; it moves quite quickly, in my experience, in the last couple of years, and again, comparing to what goes on in England, it’s far more fluid, so the support gets to where it should be quicker and much, much easier.

Sarah, did you want to add—?

Yes. I can add to that, I think. So, in terms of tackling food poverty, I think that fits in. In some ways, you don’t need to take that out of the whole picture poverty, as in, people who are suffering from food poverty are probably suffering from poverty in the round, and so, I think in terms of the effectiveness of some of the schemes that are there, then the same things that I’ve said before would be there. But I think that there has been some work outside of that that is specific to organisations that are helping to tackle food poverty, if that makes sense. So, organisations such as ourselves and some of our community food members have received support that has helped them in that way, and I think that that help has helped people. Because they've been receiving food, it's allowed them to have extra food from another source, which has enabled them to have extra money in their pockets for something else, if that—. Hopefully, that makes some sense. And organisations that are helping to tackle food poverty are helping people to address some of those other things because of the services that they provide in the round, because they're not just about giving somebody a food parcel; they are about giving them the advice and so on as well. I'm not sure if that does answer that, but, hopefully, it helps a little.

Okay. Over to you, Ken.

I think that the grants that we've had from Welsh Government schemes have been effective in terms of being a little broader in their approach and less—. I mentioned the tenancy hardship grant before, which was very strict in its criteria. When we've got a national model for a grant scheme, then trying to apply that and get it out locally can sometimes be a challenge, because, obviously, each of the 22 areas have got their own differences. I think it's been a huge success, working with third sector organisations, who have absolutely come into their own during the pandemic and since. From a local authority perspective, those links and connections have been—. Well, we couldn't have managed without them, and I think that those partnerships are going from strength to strength.

So, what we've found in terms of access to Welsh Government schemes has been a partnership approach has been the best way to get the most money into Flintshire to deliver the most difference. We've been quite creative in terms of how we've applied for different grants from different areas. It's a huge learning curve. I think, if I may feed this back, it would be useful if we could have broader grants, because food poverty is not in isolation, and I think that's what Sarah was just saying. We can have a grant for food poverty, but from somebody who would deliver at the front line, using that grant and those funds, the broader the opportunity we have to use those grants means we can make more of a difference. Sometimes, the grant conditions are so tight that we can't necessarily apply it. So, I think maybe what I'm asking for is a broader approach to allow the local areas, whether that be third sector, the local authority, charitable organisations, to be able to use that money in a way that fits their community, because not all of the communities are the same.

Flexibility, then; much more flexibility. So, in-work poverty is becoming increasingly apparent, and, with in-work poverty, there's obviously food poverty, and I've been hearing, particularly from high schools, that there have been instances of schoolchildren being turned away at the till, because they've built up debts that their parents are unable to pay. Apart from it being incredibly embarrassing and humiliating for those young people who endure this, suffer this, it also contributes towards their food poverty. Are you picking up any information and any intelligence in regard to this problem within schools?

I haven't.

Not directly, although we are aware that some of the take-up schemes for the free breakfasts and things weren't working, and we're working with our schools to actually look at offering something broader on the basis that the breakfast that the child isn't taking—it's normally in high schools—could be because they can't get there on time. They might have caring responsibilities or a chaotic lifestyle and can't access that breakfast. We've been running a scheme in Flintshire for the last two years, working with a local fruit provider to provide free fruit into school so that there's no—. Anybody in the school can have access to the free fruit, recognising that's not a meal.

I haven't had any direct feedback about children and young people being turned away at the till, but there are huge challenges around school food. I think primary is probably a safer environment than the high schools. I think the biggest risk is in the high schools, actually. But it's not something I've come across in terms of children being turned away; I haven't had that feedback.

But with our community support and outreach work, we are trying to support the families as a whole, whether that's via the child in school or whether it's via the parents outside of the school, so there are lots of things that we can do. It's not something that I've come across directly, but it will be happening, I would think. Either the child's not accessing the canteen service because they know there's no money on the account—. That could be very real. A lot of work has been done around dignity and free school meals, and actually it's a cashless system and all of that, and I know that the free-school-meal allowance goes directly onto the account. I think there's still a long way to go between closing the gap in options for children who might access free school meals and those who don't. There is still a huge gap in terms of what those children can access.

Robbie Davison wanted to come in.

Just to add, tomorrow I'll be presenting to the school food cross-party group a particular school food model that we've got. One aspect of the model is that we will tackle hunger with any school that we work with. So, if any child is part of a school and is hungry, then they will not need to declare themselves hungry except to teachers, and others, and we will feed them for as long as we're working with that school free of charge. This is an important step forward, particularly when we're looking at universal primary school meals.

Okay. We'll come on to free school meals in a moment. Ken, back to you.

Thanks, Chair. This is a question direct to Robbie, actually. You developed the food store as an alternative to foodbanks. Can you just tell us why you chose the approach that you selected and why you think it's a better way of doing things?

First and foremost, it's a concentration on meals, so people are provided with meals to eat just like all of us eat meals, and the idea behind the food store is to allow people to eat well when they're in crisis. We use—. I think I put it in the submission: if people eat well, they cope well; if they don't eat well, they do not cope well. So, what we're trying to do is get people eating well whilst they're at the real pitch of their crisis. The big difference in this is to give people choice, allow people to eat as normally as they would if they had money in the first place, and then move people away from the crisis that they're in—so, the over-reliance on charity—to a place, as I mentioned earlier, where they're paying towards their own well-being.

Now, what we've found is that 75 per cent—. When we started this, there was some commentary about whether people would actually start to pay towards the food themselves. We're converting 75 per cent of the people, who are paying £15. So, 75 per cent of everybody who started getting food for free, at the end, the final four weeks, are paying £15 towards the food. That's because the food is relevant to their lives; that's because—often for the first time—people are cooking at home again or eating well at home. And then what they're seeing is that the value is in the service that we provide. So, they're willing to pay the £15. What's important for us, though, is don't let people fall off the end after the 12-week period. So, what we do is we wrap that around with our mobile shop approach, which allows people then to move into the subsidy position where they're buying ready meals from us at £2, which is cheaper than they can get anywhere else, and, importantly, they can buy meals for a family of four for £4—again, much cheaper than they can get anywhere else. And what we guarantee is that the food will taste fantastic. You've got to make sure that the food tastes well as well.

Excellent. Thank you. You've answered my final question, actually, about the subsidy. So, thanks, Chair.

Okay. Sarah Germain wanted to come in.

Yes. I'd just like to add a bit to that. Quite a lot of our community food members are not what you would call foodbanks; they are providing other services. So, a number of our members are running community pantries, which sounds very similar to your food store. So, a large number of our members are running community pantries, and those pantries tend to charge a membership fee to be part of almost like a food club, where you can come along and choose your own items from what they have available that week, and there will be a range of fresh food and veg, dairy, all sorts of different things there. One of them is actually running a mobile pantry as well, and then the other side of that is community meals. A lot of our members will provide community meals, whether that's in a community cafe or whether that's one of the homeless hostels providing meals, where the people that come in and access meals there are paying £1, maybe, for that food as well. So, a lot of our members are providing that service. That isn't a free, hand-out service. It's something that people can feel proud of being part of as well.

Thank you. Ken, did you have any further questions? Or shall I—

No, that's it from me, Chair. Thank you.

Okay. Can I call Altaf Hussain? You've got some questions on longer term objectives.

Yes, thank you very much. All of you have said that foodbanks are not the answer to tackle food poverty. What would you prefer to see, and what role can the Welsh Government play in delivering that over the longer term?

Sarah, FareShare's website, examining the use of foodbanks, confirmed that seven out of 10 charities say that 73 per cent of people are accessing support for the first time; 51 per cent accessing it despite being in full employment; and 60 per cent are families with children, which the Chair had already asked about. What does this tell us about the short to longer term challenges in responding to people's needs?

Sarah, do you want to start off?

Yes. From what I understand, you're asking about how we can support people longer term. The FareShare model is that we use surplus food from the food industry. It's good food. It's just otherwise going to go to waste, because it hasn't got a commercial outlet, for all sorts of reasons, but it's still good food. Because of that, we find that it is a long-term solution, because it's not asking people to donate food. And in terms of the organisations that we're working with, I think they're trying to help people. It's just that at the moment it's really difficult to find that long-term solution and that long-term way out, because the prices are just keeping going in the wrong direction, so more and more people are getting pulled into it.

But we do need to look at not just having a knee-jerk reaction to some of these things as well, I think. We've got to look at what can we immediately do to help people, but what is the long-term solution out of that. I think some of that might be around—. And it's difficult to say this at the moment, because people keep saying, 'Well, if you put wages up, that's just going to exacerbate the situation,' but I do think that some people that are in these situations are in lower-paid jobs, or are in short-term contracts or whatever, so we do need to look at people having good employment, encouraging the real living wage in organisations out there. All of these things, I think, will help to fix that situation longer term. Yes. I don't think there is an easy solution, unfortunately.

Robbie.

In answering the question, I'd like to split out food poverty from poverty per se. It's really important. Poverty is kind of a confluence of all kinds of things, unemployment and so on—we know what poverty is. Interestingly, food poverty is the lack of availability of good food, and, if people are eating well, they are no longer in food poverty. They're still in poverty, often, but they're no longer in food poverty, and we kind of need to differentiate between the two. It's a well-known and well-researched statistic that eight out of 10 people do not access food aid services at any point, so where are these eight out of 10 people going to receive their assistance? We've been, for quite some time now, concentrating on how do you create solutions. We are wholly focused on food poverty and making sure that people get decent food when they are in crisis. So, our model—and the model is in play in other areas as well—is how, as a social business, can you use your profits to make sure that you are subsidising food for people to access that will lift them out of food poverty.

It's probably not for today, and I may be touching on it tomorrow at the cross-party group, but I really do believe—particularly around universal free school meals—that no child in Wales needs to go hungry while that kind of provision is available, if that provision is married to a system and model that focuses on retaining the social value within the system to make sure that works on behalf of children all of the time. So, to repeat, I really do not believe that food poverty in children in schools is necessary once universal free school meals are rolled out.

Thank you. I'd like to come back to you. Can you tell us how your approach will help to tackle food poverty in rural communities over the longer term? And, over the longer term, is this an approach you plan to roll out beyond Flintshire? What are the potential challenges and opportunities from doing this?

The mobile food store and how it will be in the long term is about everything that Robbie has just said. It's a paid-for service—people pay for that service. Interestingly, on the mobile food stores, the biggest customers in some of our rural areas are single men who are on their own and have never really cooked for themselves or don't access that. So, we have a huge customer base already. And I'm not saying that those people are necessarily in food poverty. Well, they are not in poverty, but they are in food poverty because they can't access good food, or they don't know how to access good food. So, as Robbie has just said, it is a wider picture around the difference between poverty and food poverty.

In terms of it being a legacy system, it's a paid-for service, so it doesn't rely on grants to operate. So, it's not a project. I think that's the big thing: it's not a project. It is a legacy service and provision that's operating in Flintshire, and will continue to grow if it's funded to begin with. Then, it will grow itself after that, because it is a commercial, social model.

Robbie Davison, Altaf, wanted to add something.

Jen just touched on it, so it just made me think. It would be useful sometimes, in the use of language that we have on our money and Welsh Government support—. For us, you see, we see the grant as investment into services: so, investment into creating a solution to the problem, rather than it being a grant to fund something that has already been there in the first place. I think that it sometimes helps to say that the Welsh Government is investing in solutions, rather than providing grants to support what is currently in existence.

Thank you, Chair.

Thanks, Altaf. Moving on to Sioned Williams.

Thank you, Chair. Hopefully, the Wi-Fi connection is okay. I'm having problems. They are working on the road. I just wanted to ask a couple of additional questions on free school meals. You've already touched on the potential of free school meals to address food poverty. In terms of Well Fed and Flintshire council, you've committed to feeding every child and their families, free of charge, for as long as they're in crisis. Can you explain to us how exactly you use the free school meals provision to support the whole family? How does that work?

We're in discussions now with Newydd, the current school food provider, and we're having conversations in Wirral, too. How the business model works—because it is a business model—is that we produce meals at scale. So, for instance, it wouldn't work commercially if we were only working with one school, because there's not enough income from the service to be able to provide just back to one school. But once you start to be producing meals in multiple thousands—. Let's, for argument's sake, say we provided 50,000 meals per week. How we use our profit from that provision is different from other providers. As a social business, we're choosing to use some of our profit to reinvest, to provide meals back to the children and their families.

We've modelled this, we know it can be afforded, but it comes back to how do we retain, how do we invest, to make sure that the social value is retained on behalf of the children. And that value in the first place comes from the increased provision, which is the universal approach, and then those increased numbers drop in, as meals we're going to provide, and then we use our profits to make sure that we reinvest back into the schools themselves. What's important is that, when people are fed well, when children are fed well at the point of their crisis, and their families, they do not stay in food poverty for that long. Because they've eaten, they're moving on, and then they move on to something else. If they don't get access to decent food or no food at all, they remain in food poverty and the problem becomes bigger. So, there are a number of facets to this, but crucially, because of a larger provision of school meals, and because we're a social business, and how we use our profits, that's how we can pay to make sure that people access free food at the point of their crisis. I hope that was clear.

Sioned, are you able to come back now?

Thank you. Are there measures the Welsh Government should take to enhance access to free school meals in relation to secondary school pupils and primary school pupils in year groups that do not yet receive universal provision?

Thank you. I think take-up of free school meals has always been a challenge; that's not new. I think there is a still a big gap in terms of those that would be entitled to free school meals under the current scheme that don't access it, for whatever reason. I think there's a lot of intelligence we need to gather around those children and young people and their families as to why. We've done lots of targeted support at Flintshire, where we've used our internal data to recognise groups where they aren't claiming but should be, and going back to the model I mentioned before about everybody having access to all of the information, and all of the understanding about the different schemes. We do significant targeted approaches each year to try to maximise those people who are entitled to claim the free school meals. Obviously, the free school meal claim also benefits the school directly, doesn't it, with the additional grants that the school directly can gain. So, it's part of a wider piece of work, and it's ongoing. I think the universal free school meals will obviously assist with that greatly, although the entitlement to free school meals will sit alongside that, and we're just working out how that's all going to work at the moment. Engaging with the children and young people in the schools and in and around their communities we hope will have that effect, and arming people with all the information about what people could be entitled to.

Sioned, did you have any further questions?

Robbie, you wanted to come in there, I think.

I think that the Welsh Government should be congratulated for taking the universal route, because it's a big and bold step. But we have to remember and imagine the pressures that are on the school kitchens to make this work, and to make this work in a compelling way that draws in parents. I have an ideal in my head that wouldn't it be fantastic that every parent trusted school food that much that everybody would stay for school meals, and the teachers would like to eat with the children, and so on. I think that's the environment that we would all like to see. It's one of the outcomes we'd like to see from the universal roll-out. And then extending it into secondary schools as well would be an amazing piece of work.

Thank you. Thank you, Chair.

Thanks very much. Moving on to Jane Dodds.

Thank you very much, Chair. I have some questions for you all separately. The first question is for Jen, please. We've read evidence from Flintshire County Council, and you're very clear on the gaps in the cost-of-living crisis and the need for food interventions. Can you give us further details, please, on how you support families in the six key areas that you've identified? Thank you very much.

Thank you. Yes, I'm happy to do so. We've got two former COVID support hubs that we've developed in Flintshire, and so over the last two to three years we've been pushing forward with those models. Obviously, running a fixed hub in a town isn't necessarily suitable for everybody. When I talked earlier about arming everybody with the information and building on the partnerships and making every contact with our residents count, that's part of the journey we're on. We've still got a long way to go—we're not there yet—but the support hub model, whether it be fixed or whether it be part of a dispersed work group, is working for us in Flintshire. We're kind of rolling forward from crisis to crisis. We developed the warm hubs model very quickly at the end of the summer last year ahead of the fuel poverty crisis. For us, it was about understanding what assets we had and where we could deliver straight away.

Certainly, for our older people, where we've got the majority of our hubs, we had the community assets within our sheltered housing schemes. So, it was about maximising the use of our assets that were available, encouraging staff to skill up in different areas, and think broader than what might be written on their job description. If we've got accommodation support staff, whose job is generally the good neighbour scheme, being on call and things like that for older people through our sheltered schemes, actually, it's now about them encouraging people into the community centre, tackling the loneliness and isolation—there's soup and company during the day, and the idea of it was that they could access the community space and not have to put the heating on during the day. That was as simple as it was to begin with.

Actually, a lot of those communities have taken over the running of that themselves. So, part of it is skilling up and accessing people and our partner organisations to say, 'That might not be your job, but this is the right thing to do at the moment in the broad spectrum of supporting people'. And actually, the next stage, which is really positive for us to see, is that those communities are starting to support themselves and take these things over. And again, going back to an earlier question, that's where the legacy will come from. That's where the sustainability will come from—so, providing that additional quite intense support to begin with, and then those communities evolving and supporting themselves, because that's what it should be about.

As a local authority, obviously, we're restricted in terms of our funding to be able to deliver all of that, which is why we went back to what assets have we got available, in buildings or whatever, what assets have our staff got, and, actually, how can we push that to make these new initiatives happen and work, ultimately, for the people in our communities, because that's our job, isn't it, to support those people.

Thank you very much. And this question follows on from what you've just said, and it's for Sarah, please. Now, Sarah, in your evidence, you've mentioned how Welsh Government needs to support the third sector. And again, can you just give us some more details as to how the Welsh Government could support the third sector in the longer term?

Yes. As you say, I've said about that. I think there are a number of things. I think part of it is about recognising the difference that the third sector can make, and I don't think this is just a job for the Welsh Government; I think it's about, similar to what Jen's been saying, about bringing them into the mix of the support that is available and understanding and recognising that. I think sometimes the third sector gets pushed to one side a little bit in these things, so bringing them in and making them a true partner in the support that's available, I think, is really key.

A couple of things that they've told us that they need were things—. Well, you won't be surprised to hear they all want more funding, but that came out quite clearly. And I think some of that is around the longevity of funding as well. Quite often, funding is available for a year or for a short-term project, and so having longer term funding for organisations is quite key, and then that allows you as an organisation to put plans in place, thinking about how things are going to move forward, rather than it just being that short-term fix.

And then I think there are support services that are sometimes only available for certain sections. So, there are things like training that is sometimes maybe only available for businesses or a certain sector that could be made available to a wider audience and the third sector might therefore benefit from those as well. But equally, they could be a provider of some of those services at the same time as well, because they're quite skilled in certain areas.

Thank you very much. And the final question to Robbie, please. I was very interested to hear that there is a difference—and I have been thinking about it as well—between providing food and providing meals. It was very interesting to hear that perspective. Do you have any evidence what that difference is, that distinction between providing food or providing meals? Thank you.

Evidence: if you are referring to academic evidence, we don't have any of that, but what we have is more than anecdotal, in the sense that we're on the front line every single day, every single week, every single month. So, for instance, the services that we provide, besides the food store, which was mentioned before, are that we manage cookery training within communities. We're now training up to 36 people per month with cookery training, and what we do is, we provide meal bags with recipes and recipe cards in those bags, so it's easy for people to cook. Now, interestingly, at the end of these programmes, we are converting 80 per cent of people who are coming to the training to being customers of ours. Now, previously, over 60 per cent—I think I mention it in the submission that we gave—over 60 per cent of everybody that we bump into are not cooking at home at all. So, 60 per cent weren't cooking and we move into a place where 80 per cent are becoming customers of ours because the food tastes great, it's easy to cook and it's affordable, which is really, really important. And I think what's most notable in this is that, particularly if I go back to the food store, which is important, as I said before—. I'll give you a quick story. Sometimes, when we show up for the first time, because we deliver door to door, when we show up for the first time, people look at the meal box and go, 'Wow, what is this?' because they haven't cooked for such a long time. Then, interestingly, after a few weeks of cooking and really getting into how easy it is to cook the food and how tasty the food is, it becomes second nature and they want to pay for the food at the end. So, that 75 per cent conversion is significant again. So, if we're looking at figures that are, for us, from a practice-based point of view, we've got this 80 per cent conversion around cookery training, and we've got a 75 per cent conversion because the food tastes great and also it's affordable. So, it's a big leap from what was previously not cooking at all.

Thank you very much. That's very interesting. Thank you, Chair.

Okay. I think we've got a couple of minutes, so I'll just use the Chair's privilege to ask you a little bit about supply lines, because I represent a Cardiff constituency and the wholesalers are saying it's really difficult to access fruit and vegetables—and I can see Sarah Germain nodding. So, I just wondered how bad things are up in the north-east of Wales, whether you've got better supply lines through Liverpool and Manchester or how are you resolving this, because the wholesalers are saying that so much of what is available is simply not sellable because the price that they would have to sell it at without making a loss, people won't buy it.

What we know from our supply chain is that a couple of suppliers are choosing not to supply fruit and veg because of the cost. So, we're able to get fruit and veg, which is primarily coming from Liverpool and Manchester fruit and veg markets, but some are choosing not to deliver fruit and veg because, as I said, it's too expensive. So, what we are looking to do now, which is important and these conversations are starting next week and the following week, is that we're looking to work directly with farms, because we have a big production facility, and we're looking to work directly with farms and to buy at scale. And then, where we can buy at scale, we're going to bring that in and prepare on that basis. So, we're really looking to shorten the supply chain where we can, but it's not always possible in the location that we're in because of the supply chains that surround us, or the lack of supply chains that surround us.

Sarah Germain.

The whole of the food industry is feeling things at the moment. The whole of the food industry has just been hit time and time again over the last couple of years, with Brexit, the war in Ukraine is affecting the supply chain, the cost-of-living crisis is affecting food businesses as well—it's affecting their energy costs, it's affecting their fuel costs, the costs of them buying things to make things is going up, wage costs are going up. The whole situation is just affecting the whole of the supply chain. And as a result of that, there are things happening like the supermarkets are reducing their lines. So, they're reducing the number of lines that they're taking because they want to keep the costs low, they don't want to have very much waste. So, they're doing things like that to reduce their costs and reduce their waste. But, yes, the whole industry is being affected by a whole host of different things at the moment.

I was at a meeting with some chief execs from other food businesses a couple of weeks ago, and they were saying that the supply chain is one of their major issues as a food business, as well as employment and employment costs. At the moment, those two things are really front and centre of what they're seeing. And so that is affecting what we can get hold of as an organisation that deals with surplus, because the food industry is trying to reduce waste, which is great because that's part of what we're about as well, but that means that we're trying to be quite innovative in what we're doing.

So, we're taking on a new unit that will allow us to process and handle the more difficult foods, so that we can take in more fruit and veg, but then split it down into amounts that our organisations can use, so they're not having a whole tray of one thing; they're having a mixture of different fruits and vegetables. We're looking at whether we can break down catering packs from large sizes into smaller sizes; we're looking at whether we can work with a partner to create meals from fruit and veg that is surplus, so that that's usable by the organisations that we're working with. So, the situation with the supply chains is making us have to do things slightly differently as well, and I think that's the same across the whole food industry.

When you talk about difficult foods, do you mean perishable foods?

It's kind of slang language, I guess; it's me talking about foods that our community food members find more difficult to either handle or to give out to organisations.

So, for example, the catering packs: a smaller number of our community food members are able to use those, because they're cooking meals, whereas organisations that are giving food out—perhaps a pantry, for example—can't handle catering packs, so we're looking at putting in processes so that we can deal with that on their behalf, so to speak.

And then fruit and veg: because we get offered, say, a whole pallet of one type of fruit and veg, that is more difficult to handle than smaller amounts of lots of different fruits and veg, so we're putting in processes to be able to take in a greater number of pallets that we can then break down into usable amounts for different organisations. They don't want—I don't know—100 kg of one type of fruit and veg in one go, for example, and they don't want that week on week; they want a mixture of things to be able to make a meal or give out to people.

Okay. That sounds interesting. Very good. I'd like to thank you all. I could personally continue for a very long time, but we have got to take a short break now before we bring in another set of witnesses, so I'd like to thank you all for coming along, some of you from quite a distance. We will send you a transcript of what you've said, and it's really important that you make sure that we've captured what you've said accurately.

And otherwise, we'll make sure that you get a copy of our report once we've published it. And so, thank you very much indeed for all your interesting ideas. The committee will now take a short break until—if you can come back just before 3 o'clock, we'll start again on the dot at 3 o'clock.