Team win Inclusive Impact Award for Social Inclusion

Posted on 28 November 2023

Congratulations to the FixOurFood team which includes staff from Health Sciences, the Hull York Medical School and School for Business and Society who won an award at the University of York’s Inclusive Impact Awards last week.

Sundus Mahid with award

The FixOurFood team won the Social Inclusion Award which recognises an individual, a group or a particular activity or initiative that has advanced social inclusion for an identified, margnisalised or under-represented group.

The FixOurFood project is a Free School Meal Auto-Enrolment action-oriented project. It is led by Maria Bryant, Professor of Public Health Nutrition, supported by Dr Sundus Mahdi, Louise Padgett and Rob Oxley, alongside collaborators and partners at the Food Foundation and Bremner & Co.

The project is working with 20 local authorities to support the set-up of auto-enrolment processes for Free School Meals with implementation and impact evaluation. This work has already started to demonstrate substantial impact in the way that it is helping children entitled to receive free school meals to have access to a hot healthy school dinner, while ensuring that schools receive the necessary funding linked to Free School Meals. Not only is this likely to lead to health and academic benefits for children, it also has financial benefits to families and financial benefits to schools through pupil premium funding.

Professor Maria Bryant said: “I am delighted that the work we are doing on free school meals auto-enrolment has received this award. The project is already having an important impact on families, schools and local authorities. Interim findings suggest that about an extra 1000 children per local authority are now receiving a daily school meal that they are entitled to and I’m excited to see the final results at the end of next year.”

Further information can be found on www.fixourfood.org.