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The Food at Home project has published a new local action mapping tool for local authorities, health and care trusts and partners. The tool aims to help local authorities and stakeholders understand the key levers and range of actions that could be utilised to address barriers to ensure disabled and older people can access nutritional, safe and appropriate food. Download the tool.

This local action mapping tool comes out of recently published research on the opportunities and barriers experienced by disabled people and older people in accessing food. The research identified the varied practice around the UK, including examples of good practice led by local authorities. It also highlighted a number of key barriers (including income and extra costs faced by older and disabled people, challenges with food shopping and preparation and access to safe and appropriate foods for people living with health conditions).

You can also access the tool on the same web page as the research report (the tool will appear as a download at the top of the page to the right of the original research report).

These structural barriers, alongside individual challenges, point to a need for action to ensure disabled and older people can maintain food access and maximise their own agency, strengths, skills and assets to support their own access to food as well as peer support. However, given the complexity of the policy and practice context it has been hard to identify the key points of intervention at different scales, including crucially the local level - at which many services are commissioned and managed