Cash First approaches aim to get money into people’s pockets to reduce or eradicate the need for emergency food aid.
Independent Food Aid Network define this as addressing the root causes of poverty, meaning everyone in the UK could afford to buy adequate, healthy and nutritious food.
They identify 5 stages of support:
- Adequate benefit payments and fair wages
- Statutory cash grants
- Charitable cash grants
- Vouchers
- Emergency food parcels
Project Brief
Recognising the contribution of current activity across Glasgow and the valuable learning this offers to the wider community food sector within the city and beyond, we carried out mapping on current Cash First/Money Advice activity across Glasgow’s community food sector, working with researchers to understand how gaps in understanding and service provision are being addressed and to promote the value of Cash First approaches in reducing the need for foodbanks and food aid.
Research and Mapping Activity
The research captured key data from across the city including: partners involved; target groups; reported impact; identifying gaps, challenges overcome, lessons learned and recommendations.
Our mapping provides an opportunity for Glasgow’s Food Map to be updated with all relevant Cash First activities to promote its importance and serve as a valuable resource to organisations and individuals across Glasgow.
View the Research Report By Delve Here
GCFN would like to thank Delve, a Glasgow-based and UK-wide Community Development collaborators and consultants for this important piece of work. We hope this study can help other Community Food Initiatives across Scotland develop their own Cash First practices.
Executive Summary
This report details the findings and recommendations of a research project commissioned by the Glasgow Community Food Network and funded by Scottish Government. The research explored how cash-first approaches might be implemented in community food settings. Using qualitative methodologies, community food initiatives (CFIs) across Glasgow were engaged.
The research aimed to understand the awareness and effectiveness of cash-first supports, such as support to access advice, the Scottish Welfare Fund and vouchers, within CFIs as well as gauge the readiness of the sector to be involved in city-wide planning to develop cash-first as an approach to tackling food insecurity across Glasgow.
The research found there is varied understanding of the term cash-first and how it might be implemented. Despite this, there was broad support for approaches which put money in people’s pockets as well as evidence of lots of existing cash-first activity already happening in community food settings. Dignity, choice and control were often considered central to cash-first approaches. However, first-hand accounts revealed a panoply of challenges related to funding, resource and overwhelming demand. In addition, the research found challenges related to specific experiences, such as for people seeking asylum, the participation and involvement of people with lived experience of food insecurity and the provision of existing cash-first supports within CFIs.
There is clearly appetite across the sector to collaborate and work together to develop cash-first approaches in the city, with lots of ideas and suggestions provided by research participants, as detailed in the following recommendations.
Recommendations
1) Increased opportunity for CFIs to develop a shared understanding of cash-first such as through training, workshops, and spaces for conversations
2) Exploration of how cash-first supports might be implemented in CFIs, for example, through the development of a variety of ‘cash-first in action’ profiles or scenarios that reflect the diversity of the sector and the different contexts in which organisations are working.
3) Increased opportunities for CFIs to learn about the drivers of food insecurity and why people may experience income crisis, as well as facilitated opportunities to discuss sector attitudes and beliefs about people who experience food insecurity.
4) Improved and increased participatory mechanisms for people with lived experience of food insecurity to be involved in leading and designing cash-first approaches within CFI settings
5) Citywide engagement with people with No Recourse to Public Funds to understand how specific barriers faced can be overcome through the development and investigation of the recommendations laid out in Spotlight 1
6) Greater clarity from Scottish Government on the responsibilities of different actors in implementing cash-first approaches, including the role of CFIs, the Local Authority, and Scottish Government.
7) For CFIs to contribute toward a cash-first approach, they need multi-year and unrestricted funding. There also needs to be adequate additional resource provided to the sector for developing and delivering cash-first supports alongside their core services.
8) Place-based and joined up cash-first approaches to be established through the resourced development of local partnerships and networks
The research also Spotlights 4 different project areas of Cash First work from across Glasgow.
Current work:
Cash First Action Profiles
Delve are currently being commissioned to produce a series of Cash First Action Profiles that can be used as a learning tool to share and develop practice around Cash first Approaches in a community food setting. See our first example on Glasgow South East Foodbank see pdf here. See the CANVA file here.
Please contact Paddy at [email protected] if you would like to share your work and have a action profile produced for shared learning opportunities (by mid January 2025).
Working with ALISS
We are now working closely with ALISS (A Local Information System for Scotland), a programme funded by the Scottish Government and delivered by the Health Care Alliance Scotland (the ALLIANCE).
We are reaching out to community food organisations in Glasgow to get them training on how to use the ALISS system and improve data on our free food provision and money advice map.
To sign up for ALISS and or training go to their website click here.
Further Training and Cash First Service Opportunities
If you would like to talk to us about Cash First or learn about training opportunities informal/formal then please get in touch, email [email protected]
We are also helping partners in financial inclusion and community support scope where Community Food Initiatives in Glasgow may be interested to have in-person advisors and workers please get in touch to the above email.
Addressing Gaps in Service Provision
Having identified gaps in service provision, we are currently working with partners including the Glasgow Food Policy Partnership, to explore developments to address such gaps, with this being informed by those most affected, including people with no recourse to public funds.
For a recording of our recent shared learning event with partners and Glasgow's wider ranging project across sectors please see Glasgow Centre for Population and Health's site here.
Mark Fitzpatrick is leading on this project. For more info, contact him at [email protected]