The Meals on Wheels scheme has been delivering food to the vulnerable for over half a century, but – faced with budget cuts and the increasing demands of an ageing population – many councils look set to scrap the service. Thanks to a new social innovation marketplace that connects innovators with councils, however, there may yet be a happy ending to the story….read on to find out more.
It all began in Peckham (maybe)
Once upon a time, I worked for a brief period in a community centre in Peckham whose claim to fame was that it was the first place in the world to operate the Meals on Wheels service. The centre had a long history dating back to 1896, so it’s not implausible that this claim had some basis in truth, though the building’s rather ramshackle appearance and the parade of weird and wonderful characters who daily sought refuge and conversation amidst its leaky walls made it seem more like the land that forgot rather than the pioneer of such a globally successful scheme. Indeed, according to Wikipedia (that font of all knowledge and wisdom), it was in fact in Hertfordshire in 1947 that the first meals were home-delivered, though the phrase ‘Meals on Wheels’ first entered our vernacular during the Second World War, when members of the Women’s Voluntary Service used to deliver portable meals to on-duty servicemen. Probably this ambiguity around Peckham’s precise role in the history of organised food programmes will never be resolved, but most accounts at least agree that Meals on Wheels originated in Britain, before later catching on in countries as far and wide as Australia, Canada and the USA. The scheme thus has a special place in our curious, inventive and multifarious cultural heritage.
Curiouser and Curiouser…
From the beginning, the Meals on Wheels story has born the traits of a quintessentially English eccentricity. In the post-war years, food was often transported to the homeless victims of a war-torn Britain in prams and wheelbarrows, with straw hay bales and felt hats being used to keep the steaming dishes warm. Other countries had their own quirky methods of transport: in Australia, the first meals on wheels were delivered by a woman on a tricycle, while in America, it was a troop of school girls known as ‘the platter angels’ who prepared, packaged and delivered meals to the elderly and disabled members of their Pennsylvanian community. Their ‘angelic’ deeds would soon inspire the development of a nationwide food delivery service in the form of the Meals on Wheels Association of America, which now boasts the largest corps of volunteers in the USA, with between 800,000 and 1.7 million volunteers delivering 1 million meals every day to the needy.
The Last Goodbye?
In Britain, too, the Meals on Wheels service continues to provide a vital service for the lonely, the elderly and the disabled. In most cases, however, these are not the home-cooked creations of old, but more often than not frozen, pre-packaged ‘airline food’ delivered in identical little plastic containers with identical little plastic sleeves. In June of this year, Camden council sparked controversy by announcing that it was going to stop distributing hot meals to the elderly, and would instead replace them with what one pensioner described as ‘those damn pre packed things.’ Similarly, Norfolk City Council announced that – in an effort to save £1.2 million – it plans to axe its Meals on Wheels service entirely, and will instead provide people with ‘personal budgets’ with which they will be able to purchase their meals from a number of accredited organisations. Not surprisingly, news of this decision provoked anger and scepticism, with one spokesperson from Age UK expressing fears that ‘with health and social care we're going to find providers who choose their clients and not the other way round.’
It would be sad if the Meals on Wheels story was to creak to a halt there, having started as a triumphant expression of the altruistic, resilient and resourceful spirit of post war Britain and gradually grown into an ever more impersonal and impossible system. And yet, with cash-strapped Local Authorities facing the reality of an ageing population that will place even more pressure on scant resources, innovations that enable services to be delivered in cost-effective ways are vital - and there are those who convincingly argue that the 60-year-old Meals on Wheels service is no longer one that is tenable in these times of financial austerity.
Back to the Future
Thankfully, platforms such as Futuregov’s Simpl social innovation marketplace may have the answer. As Futuregov’s Community Manager Rachel Karasik writes in the Guardian, Simpl is a place where ‘schemes to improve public services, share resources and improve accessibility are bartered.’ In other words, innovators with good ideas about how to solve social challenges post their ideas on the online marketplace, and councils – using resources rather than money - ‘bid’ for the ideas in an E-bay style auction. It’s a 'simpl' but winning formula.
Amongst the many eclectic and entrepreneurial ideas that Simpl has already attracted, Murtaza Abidi’s We: Care Community Kitchens offers a compelling twist in the Meals on Wheels tale, by proposing to connect up those who need a helping hand with people in their local community. On a monthly, weekly or daily basis, the ‘helper’ might for example cook a healthy and nutritious meal for an elderly person who lives down the road, or simply pop round for a cup of tea or to carry out a quick errand. We: Care would seek to incentivise this help by offering point-based vouchers that could be redeemed by We:Care partners, including local shops and transport systems. The aim would be to build up a network of local support for the ‘needy’ that would significantly reduce the burden on council services, boost community cohesiveness and resilience, and ensure that the social dimensions of the original Meals on Wheels service were preserved, providing people with highly valuable social interaction as well as food and nutrition. As Abidi puts it, We:Care Community Kitchens proposes to offer "a truly social service that better meets the needs of service users while playing its part in reducing a growing funding gap in social care."
I like the idea that if we:care Community Kitchens takes off, we could very well go back to the days of transporting meals in idiosyncratic ways, carrying steaming pots of vegetable stew down the road, or transporting lasagnas in the baskets of our push bikes. Perhaps there will be prams and wheelbarrows involved too. Who knows? The lesson here, though, is that innovation does not necessarily have to mean ‘the new’ – it can also mean delving into our pasts to understand what worked, and getting right back to basics.
In any case, if you want to see if the We: Care Community Kitchens idea is successful, keep your eye on Surrey, which will be piloting the project over the next few months.
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