MIRAIN LLWYD ROBERTS INTERGENERATIONAL CO-ORDINATOR, GWYNEDD COUNCIL The purpose of my research project was to explore the challenges and barriers facing intergenerational projects. The title of the research was: “Bridging the people and the community: The barriers and challenges facing intergenerational projects focusing on sustainability”. Several obstacles and challenges emerged during the research and a… Read more »
Rob Heirene is currently undertaking an ESF-funded KESS 2 PhD at the University of South Wales, carrying out research into how people with alcohol-related brain damage could be cared for in supported housing. His partner organisation, Solas Cymru, is a charity based in Newport that provides a broad range of services for people who are… Read more »
Low carbon behaviour change is a fundamental aspect of a transition to a low carbon society, but is also key when a large company is looking into reducing its utility bills. RUMM (Remote Utility Monitoring and Management) is a University of South Wales spin-out company helping companies consuming more than £100,000 of electricity, gas or water per year to reduce their energy bills…
Read more »As part of my postgraduate skills development award I have been able to attend and give an oral presentation in a symposium with both my supervisors, Prof. Pauline Horne and Dr. Mihela Erjavec at the British Psychological Societies 3-day Cognitive and Development conference at Reading University. This was a great experience and excellent opportunity to disseminate my research.
Read more »Wales is an obesity hotspot, with the 5th highest child obesity rates of 35 OECD countries: in 2010, 36% of Welsh 2-15 year olds were overweight and 19% of these were obese. The literature shows that these rates are typically doubled for children attending Special Schools. These children often show change resistant behaviours such as idiosyncratic eating patterns and reluctance to try new foods, presenting the researchers with additional challenges. Although it is known that they are more likely to develop health problems and obesity than their peers in mainstream schools, they have been entirely overlooked in the existing research until now.
My Masters Research project has involved implementing the Food Dudes programme in special schools. The Food Dudes progarmme is based on the three psychological principles: role-modeling, rewards and repeated tasting. The intervention is split into two phases: the Intensive Phase (16 days) and the Maintenance Phase (rest of the academic year).
Read more »My project is in collaboration with Food Dudes Health Ltd, who already have an award winning Healthy Eating Intervention and are now keen to develop a physical activity intervention to tackle the ongoing issue of obesity.
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Student: Catherine Sharp Company: Food Dudes Health Ltd (SR) Academic Supervisor: Dr Pauline Horne & Dr Mihela Erjavec Currently there is an obesity epidemic, which is costing the NHS millions of pounds. A prevention method to obesity and other serious illnesses, e.g. cancer, is consuming fruit and vegetable. There are more than 40 million preschool… Read more »
The KESS project was a development of an early year’s nursery intervention for children to learn to eat fruits and vegetables; it was undertaken in co-operation with our company partner Food Dudes. Food Dudes have award winning programmes proven to work with children who are in primary schools, however because we know that eating habits are established early on, we know that we should intervene as early as possible.
The KESS project was to develop an intervention for children who were about 2-3 years old and then pilot it in nurseries in the area. To my knowledge this is the only project of its kind that has successfully completed the research and immediately translated the results by the company into a commercially viable product, therefore an intervention that can be administered in nurseries nationwide.
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We got involved with KESS because we think it’s important to develop academic talent and help graduates learn about the process of bringing academic ideas to market. Academia is particularly important to us, because Food Dudes grew out of the School of Psychology at Bangor University under the leadership of the late Professor Fergus Lowe and Professor Pauline Horne. Although the programme itself had been in development for 20 years, it wasn’t until 2010-11 that Food Dudes started to become of particular interest to Public Health professionals around the UK, no doubt because of the public and media pressure to do something about the problem of obese children.
Since we span out the business in 2011/21, Food Dudes has become possibly one of the fastest growing social enterprises in the UK. That said, any support we can find for the project is warmly welcomed – hence our interest in KESS.
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