Throughout 2022 and 2023, Feeding Liverpool visited community food spaces across the city to gather stories and case studies from their older members and staff about their experiences of such spaces being a place of support beyond just food provision.
In Liverpool, one in three adults are food insecure – worrying about how they will afford food, reducing both the quality and quantity of food they are eating and, in some cases, even skipping meals and going hungry. For Liverpool’s older residents, this is a sobering reality. Around 1.7 million pensioners in the UK are living in poverty, with rates of deep poverty also steadily increasing and currently standing at 8% for this group.
While financial difficulties are typically considered the main driver of food insecurity in younger age groups and amongst families, food insecurity in older people is much more complex. Older people are disproportionately affected by malnutrition, with an estimation of as many as 1 in 10 people over 65 at risk. Medical, physical and social risk not only contribute to malnutrition but often intersect, creating a vicious cycle.
As these factors tend to have a cumulative effect and increase in presence as people age, Feeding Liverpool began this project to help identify how community food spaces can make a difference in these circumstances. This report illustrates the multi-faceted nature of community food spaces and highlights their ability to help older adults in a variety of ways beyond just food provision. This is especially important when the complexities of food insecurity among the elderly are considered; there are numerous transitions that occur later in a person’s life that demand forms of adjustment and adaptation in order to cope with the challenges these present. In order to mitigate these issues, older people can often find themselves dependent on multiple support systems – of which community food spaces can be one.
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Download the full report here