 Hello and welcome everyone to this fourth and final installment of the Cambridge University Institute for Sustainability Leadership summer research webinar. I'm very delighted to say that today we're going to be learning about Caroline Lee and Catherine Hammond's work about the role of supermarkets in supporting local community well-being. Their work forms part of the of CSR's Prince of Words Global Sustainability Fellowship program which was launched about three years ago to allow for impact for challenge led and well challenge driven and impact led research work to look at actually to real-world challenges that companies, businesses, finance and policy leaders are facing so their work is designed to inform those decision makers to take information and well robust information back into the organization organizations and inform future decisions that in this case supermarkets can make in supporting local communities. I'm very delighted to introduce to you Catherine and Caroline so Caroline Lee is a Prince of Words Fellow in community well-being at CSL and a senior research associate at Cambridge Public Health. She has over 20 years of experience in applied research through a public and mental health lens. She has also worked in both academia and consultancy sectors but always with a focus on addressing inequalities in particular Caroline specializes in evaluating policies and interventions for employment in different settings. Dr Catherine Hammond is a research associate at CSL with a background in community led regeneration particularly in market towns. She's also a chartered surveyor working in commercial property and towards understanding power dynamics in communities. Their work is supported by a philanthropic gift from a major supermarket retailer in this case from a philanthropic donation from ASDA to the University of Cambridge and I know there are some of our ASDA colleagues are on the call today as well as just also want to take this opportunity to thank ASDA for their generosity and making this work possible. The combined work of this fellowship focuses on the relationship between supermarket stores and the people, places and public services around them. Caroline and Catherine are investigating the impact of current community-oriented activities by food retailers on community well-being. In particular, their impact on more disadvantaged parts of the UK and the potential to create more impactful future interventions. So I'm not going to talk much further. I'll be about to hand over to Catherine and Caroline to talk us through their absolutely fantastic work that they've been doing with us for over two years now. Before I hand over there, just a quick note in terms of housekeeping. I know a lot of you joined us from different platforms, some through GoTo, some through LinkedIn. However, in both scenarios, you do have the option to submit questions to us, which we will be fielding at the end of the presentation or rather towards the end of the webinar. Like I said, without much further ado, I'll hand over to Catherine and Caroline. Take it away. Thank you, Jana. And hello, everybody. Thanks so much for joining us today. Catherine and I are really pleased to have the opportunity to present a flavour of the work that we've been doing, exploring the potential of supermarkets to leverage their resources and their everyday positioning to support local communities around the store. Before we start, I'd like to extend my thanks to all the people who've taken part in the conversations for the research from people working in local authorities and the voluntary and community sector across the country, particularly colleagues at ASDA and the co-op, both of those working in communities on the front line and also those in head office, many of whom have given up their time on more than one occasion in the last couple of years. The enthusiasm for what they do and openness to reflect on and share their experiences has been phenomenal. And you'll see several photographs of community colleagues from stores in their role out in the community scattered throughout the presentation. And hopefully that'll help to illustrate some of the things that we're talking about. At the same time, I do want to stress that this is an independent study and it's seeking to provide insight on the supermarket sector and community interactions as a whole. And indeed, perhaps beyond that for other businesses that are also anchored in communities. We're going to begin with the rationale for looking at this area of work and discuss the stages of the study, how we've gone about it. We'll go on to highlight the nature of existing social purpose programs, what they look like on the ground. And then we'll go on to briefly talk about how we're attempting to unpick the impact of those, the process and the outcomes resulting from those actions, as well as the potential for greater effectiveness and added value going forward. And we'll finish briefly on the next steps for the study and beyond. So starting with the rationale, why did we think this is something interesting to look into? And well, for my part, the study has its foundations in concerns for the enduring inequalities across the UK, illustrated clearly in the dramatic slowing of improvements, for example, in life expectancy in recent years, with those living in deprived communities in England spending a great proportion of their lives in poor health. The map image on the left of the screen here is from the Health Foundation. And this indicates in the deeper blue those local authorities where people live vastly fewer years in good health than those in the lighter shading. And our research begins from a standpoint that inequities result from what are termed the wider determinants of health, the unequal social, material, political conditions in which people are born, live, work and age, which affect their access to play, recreation, education, decent employment, housing and support services, influencing health and well-being throughout life. This was really laid bare recently in the differential experiences and health outcomes observed during the COVID-19 pandemic. The diagram on the right here highlights the main categories of determinants of people's health and well-being with the wider determinants, sometimes called structural determinants, like access to power, good education and employment, and their associated influence on psychosocial factors such as self-esteem and purpose in life, being at least as important as health behaviours, such as smoking and alcohol consumption. Reflecting this acknowledgement of the key influence of wider determinants has been increasingly emphasis in recent UK policy on the role of place-based strategies and community-centered approaches to intervening in ways that respond to specific features of context as a means to improving health outcomes and reducing health inequalities. Such place or community-centered perspectives often talk about an asset-based approach, and these seek to understand and identify the role of local resources or assets and their activation or mobilisation in favour of improving population well-being. These assets can be direct actions and formal services, infrastructure around organisations such as partnerships and networks of support between people in a community, the built environment and community spaces, community knowledge and insights, and human resources like staff and volunteers. And keto asset-based approaches is using these skills, capacities and the local environment to develop solutions to local challenges with levels of community well-being determined by the balance between resources available to communities and the challenges or exposures they face. So research and assessment of the impact of community-centered and asset-based approaches, however, has been almost entirely focused on statutory and third sectors. But we argue that the application of an asset-based lens is equally a useful way to view the potential of business more strategically as contributors to the well-being of their capturement communities. The status of supermarkets in particular as a linchpin in communities was highlighted in the response to the pandemic, whether that be by securing supply of essential food and medicines to residents, to rare opportunities for social interaction as essential everyday spaces, to some companies engaging widely with the mass vaccination campaigns. So a question worth asking we think then is could we be looking towards the anchor positioning of supermarkets as an opportunity to intervene for the well-being of local residents? And now Catherine's going to talk in a bit more depth about how we've gone about investigating this question and what kinds of actions and activities by supermarkets could perhaps be considered as part of an asset-based approach to community well-being. Catherine, have you got the are you able to talk? Oh, I am talking. I think you must have been on mute. OK, well, I'll start again. OK, thank you. All right, good, good, good. So turning out to the question of how we know what the supermarkets are doing in terms of their support for local communities, I'm going to run through an overview of the research process and our general approach to collecting the data. Here you can see a picture of some of the COP member pioneers out and about. Great, so now we're turning to the diagram which captures the principal stages of the research and gives you a flavor of the many diverse ways in which we've engaged with local communities. So there are four main phases, starting with our desktop analysis, where we first looked across the global literature to scope out the existing academic research on the topic. And then we examined the corporate social responsibility or CSR literature that was publicly available from the UK's major supermarkets, specifically with intention to identify activity supporting local communities. From that, we created a typology of activity, which I'll talk about in more detail in a moment. Both of these pieces have been written up as papers and we'll give you the link there at the end of the presentation. We then moved into the data collection phase, which started by us holding one to one in-depth phone interviews with 10 community champions from Asterstores across the country, from Southampton to Elgin. And we're 13 member pioneers and member pioneer coordinators at the COP from Boston to Stockholm. We talked about how they identify their community, what are its strengths and assets, as well as its challenges and priorities. We then discussed the ways that they engaged with the community and local organizations. Finally, we explored the types of activity they saw making a difference and what the impact of that was. Having gathered this information, we also scoped growing literature on community well-being and the various indices used to identify communities of need. Some of this thinking is captured in a working paper Caroline has written, which is being published by CISL shortly. Details again at the end. All of this information, the insights from the community colleagues and the well-being indices helped to identify the main case study locations, as well as shaping the data collection. There were four main case study sites for this particular place-based research, Leeds, Warrington, Whist Beach and Glantire. And then more recently, our colleague Dr. Marina Buswell, who in the course of her investigation looked specifically at supermarkets and older adults, uncovered some innovative practice in Thurwick. Finally, you'll see that there is an additional community research project or peer research element at the bottom of the diagram, which has been run in Leeds and Whist Beach. And Caroline will talk about this aspect in more detail later. You'll also see that in addition to the interviews and case studies, we extended the reach of the research by gathering information through online service of various sorts. We're now firmly into the validation phase, which has taken the information gathered in the data collection phase and identified themes and propositions, which we fed back to the community colleagues from ASDA and the COP, to see whether they agree with these preliminary findings. We're also going to be holding stakeholder discussions with a view to firm up our thoughts and recommendations. All of this will inform the final reporting phase and, most importantly, allow us to engage positively with the supermarket sector, so our insights can shape community programs going forward. We also hope that we will offer insights to inform collaborative efforts across business, local government, and the third sector, as well as informing other business sectors about how they can support local community well-being through a range of activities. Now, we're going to move on to look at the specifics of the research and the things we've done to give us insights into the research question. The initial research analyzed the CSR initiatives of the 11 supermarkets, which account for 96% of the UK's grocery market share. CSR activity was well embedded in all supermarket operations and three main themes emerged, the environment, focusing on the supermarket's operations and products, their people, staff and suppliers, and then the local community, i.e. the focus of this research. We examined information available on websites and documents, all types produced by the supermarkets, broadly in the 2020 reporting period. We recorded details of any action or initiative described as a standard of their community strategy and identified 172 individual initiatives. These were roughly split 50-50 between pre-pandemic, that is their normal operations, and those which were responding to the new context presented by the pandemic. Of course, we've continued to track the CSR initiatives since that time, but that information hasn't informed the type already. Turning now to look at the categories of support that we identified, the most frequently mentioned was, unsurprisingly, supporting food banks, as all supermarkets aim to assist on issues of food insecurity and poverty, and reduce food waste through redistribution schemes. This is a complex area where supermarkets often work with national partners such as Fair Share or the Trussell Trust, but we were interested in those local initiatives, where food, whether donated by customers at the front of store or sourced from the supermarket's own backer store donations, was directly distributed to community groups. A central pillar in the majority of retail of community CSR is fundraising for charitable good causes, although the attention is generally on national campaigns. However, we were more interested in the local level, so fundraising for good causes focuses on how they support raising the profile of small local charities and allowing them to fundraise direct from customers, for example, spots a bag packing at Christmas or stands in store with appeals for volunteers. This next category is money or grants for local groups, was about donating money directly to community groups of all kinds. There were a couple of main ways that happened. First, for supermarkets run a token scheme where communities nominate and vote for local causes in store, the number of votes determining the amount of money received, usually a few hundred pounds in each case. Second, five supermarkets have charitable foundations where grants are distributed for local causes. These can be more substantial than the token amounts, anything up to say 20,000 pounds. Turning now to donations of goods, these can include raffle prizes or perhaps donations of biscuits for local events, stationary for schools or youth groups, that sort of thing. And these small items can often be highly valued by local community groups. The next type of support is community college time. This includes the efforts to develop and support local networks as well as volunteering to help out in various ways in the community. Finally, there is a store itself as an asset and how space both inside and outside the store can be used for the benefit of the local area. Examples might include a knit and knatter group using a meeting room or a talking shop initiative being run in a store cafe where agencies come together to sign posts to help they can provide with the aim of connecting people and preventing issues escalating or a local mobile health streaming unit setting up in a car park. Okay, so once we've created the typology framework we then turn to the case study activity. This map shows the five case study locations, four of which formed for sites for the main case studies and were visited between October 2021 and July this year. Before we started identifying the sites for the case studies, we created pen portraits of the possible locations so we had a clear framework for statistics and broader information to inform decision making. You can see that the chosen places are spread widely across the country and all of them have neighbourhoods ranked in the bottom desert of indices and multiple deprivation. But apart from this the nature of the places and the supermarket locations were quite varied. Leeds and Warrington were the first two places that we visited towards the end of the pandemic lockdowns. In Leeds a city of 800,000 we visited a large standalone store serving the deprived neighbourhoods to the east of the city centre. In Warrington a town of about 200,000 the store was in the town centre with a cafe and a small referral shopping centre. Then in June this year we ran a case study in Wisbeach, a town of 34,000 in the Fence, Norfolk, Cambridge. This took quite a long time to arrange as we were unable to base ourselves in a particular store because of the churn of community colleagues. That delayed things and in the end we identified participants with the help of Cambridge's local authorities the communities team who support grassroots community development and engagement. Finally most recently we were able to go to Blanta, a community of about 17,000 within the urban area south of Glasgow. This visit was much delayed because the impact of the different waves of Covid affecting Scotland in a different way to different times to England. The store with its cafe is essentially the main retailer of Blanta, apart from a small parade of shops. Here are a few numbers to show you the high levels of engagement we achieved. At each case study location we brought together both groups of beneficiaries that is those people who have received help from supermarkets, as well as representatives of organisations that we broadly identified as acting in a connector type role. Whether they were community colleagues from supermarkets in the area or representatives of local authorities or the voluntary community sector or other organisations who work to bring communities together. The workshops followed the same pattern with each group being asked to think about their particular communities focusing on three aspects which impact on wellbeing and community resilience that is relationships and participation, place and environment and people and economy. For each of these three vast areas we asked them to score how well they thought their place did. They had a choice of red, amber and green and you can see them holding up the cards and the photos here and this spark lively debate about what that judgment meant. Next we talked about the different types of support offered by the supermarkets using the typology and how these activities make a difference to both local organisations and the community. We asked them to show us what support they received from supermarkets by using tokens to vote on each type and then they were asked which one of the categories the supermarkets should focus their efforts on in the future. We also discussed how the support they received from supermarkets made a difference and specifically what impact the activities made to community wellbeing and resilience and how did they know. We also gathered the customer voice by running the token voting exercise with customers in Leeds and Warrington to see where they thought supermarkets should focus their efforts and in Warrington we also involved the regular friendship group who met weekly in the cafe and discussed with them their community and the differences supermarkets can make. Following the case study visits to the area we carried out discussions with local study holders with a strategic perspective i.e local council officers and networking organisations to fill in any gaps and to understand how super markets support really fits the wider network of civil society and local authority action in the area. Through developing and understanding and multiple perspectives combining actions on the ground and then awareness of the supermarket and other support in the area we were able to build up a picture of how community resilience can be shaded by particular initiatives. I'll hand you back now to Caroline so she can talk about how the peer research form part of the data collection. Thanks Catherine. So yes the final element was the peer or community research project which was undertaken with groups in Leeds and with Beach. It was really vital to us that the study captured the perspective of local residents not just representatives of local residents not only on what it's like to live in the area but also about well-being concerns they have, what they knew about supermarkets and store efforts towards local communities, the value that they attached to those actions and whether they believe that there's more that they could do or could do differently. So we asked our colleagues at Leeds Beckett University Department of Health and Community Studies to lead community research projects linked to this work in two of the case study areas, Hare Hills in Leeds and Whiz Beach in Cambridgeshire. Eleven community researchers across the two localities were recruited, framed and supported to answer their chosen research questions about well-being in the local area to collect and to analyse their data and to produce a report of their findings. In one locality, two of the researchers were also staff employed in a supermarket community colleague role which was something we wanted to encourage to help bridge the gap from findings to application as well as to support a longer term relationship between stores and the community. And here on the left and the right are the front pages from the two reports that the community researchers produced and in the middle is an image of one of the groups in their first training session. In both cases, the projects reported on the strengths and the challenges of their area mirroring the approach to the case studies and the local priorities were identified by local residents interviewed or surveyed by the community researchers and they also reported on the level of awareness among most local residents of current supermarket supports in the local area. They made recommendations for different stakeholders including local authorities and the police in one area regarding future actions and specific recommendations were made for supermarkets to consider. So just a couple of quotes to illustrate firstly the concerns and secondly where supermarkets could play a role. In one area residents had a very low awareness of where they could go to help for help with their concerns about their area particularly in terms of complaints around littering, safety and crime. They also wanted support to know how they could offer their own help to to as a volunteer or to make a difference in their community. So through uncovering the regularity with which residents visited the local supermarkets they shun light on the potential of stores as everyday spaces to advertise and share information as well as report back on actions taken to improve the neighborhood. And this latter aspect was really important in demonstrating the community that they are being listened to and valued as well as contributing to pride of place and community spirit. And community researchers discovered that there was currently a likely undervaluing of the potential of community information boards in stores for example and there was potential to do something around that. In the other location shared concerns highlighted about lack of youth facilities, leisure opportunities and a breakdown of social connections and community cohesion. There was a low awareness of what supermarkets can offer by means of support which is reflected in requests for things that actually commonly feature in existing community actions such as donations of goods and support to local events. There was also a clear ask for something that we would also highlight from the wider study something likely to enhance the impact of store actions. And this was for supermarket community colleagues to buddy up with equivalent connectors in the community perhaps working for the statutory sector or or the third sector. So we'd like to thank Susan, Ruth and Louise at Leeds Becket University and most importantly the community researchers in both locations who did an absolutely fantastic job and effectively highlighted the challenge that there is to implement national community engagement strategies from supermarkets at the local level in a way that's sufficiently robust as well as flexible to respond to local issues. So that thought on how strategies which are to a large degree standardized can respond to local needs takes us neatly into the so what question. How do we deal with the rich detail and complexity that we've uncovered looking through these case studies? How do we make sense of the myriad context varied activities and varied challenges? Well throughout the research we've been informed by theory of change approach which we're testing through our discussions with the community. This is the theory of change that we've developed from out of one that was put forward by the what works well-being centre and this gives us a framework for understanding and valuing community oriented actions undertaken by food retailers in terms of their potential contribution to well-being and reducing inequalities. And this circular and cyclical representation helps us to explore to what extent do or could those supermarkets or similarly anchored local businesses intervene in ways that could improve the community conditions seen as influential on community well-being potentially building longer-term resistant resilience to future stresses such as cuts in public services, public health emergencies or extreme increases in the cost of living. So whilst this is helpful it is high level so to put some meat back on the bones we're pulling out several pathways exploring the inputs in terms of the supermarket initiatives and actions and the mechanisms of change by which these seem to make a difference in their local communities according to the data we've collected and we're validating these with those who took part in the research firstly store community colleagues from Aster and the Co-op and then with wider stakeholders in some of the case study areas and the three main pathways that we're drawing out for this piece of work is around community colleagues and how they use how they use their time. Secondly access to other resources so money, goods donations, funding publicity and thirdly the space within and outside of a store. So obviously it's it's important for business to demonstrate the value of their actions in this area both to internal and external stakeholders and we see this theoretical underpinning as providing several functions to that end. One is supporting strategy and investments secondly is a tool to guide collaborative conversations with other stakeholders in an area and thirdly is a way of monitoring and identifying the value of contributions and for example towards those UN sustainable development goals or an alignment with the UK Toms which is the current standard UK framework for reporting social value. Just to give an illustration of how we're using this and breaking it down a bit for example if we're thinking about local community and voluntary sector capacity as an important condition for supporting community well-being we can hypothesize how individuals with a key role in communities such as community champions called community colleagues might make a difference to settings over time. Sometimes we break these down into what we call context mechanism and outcome configurations which is what essentially this is here which link features of local context local context like unstable funding or a low awareness of support available to the specific activities designed to bring about change. We can also make it a hypothesis verbalize a hypothesis adopting an if then because structure if supermarket staff have the time to find out about a network with community organizations then the voluntary sector infrastructure can be better supported because community colleagues will understand local needs better and voluntary and community groups will be more aware of what support is available. So if we break down actions like this we can define and assess the growth in capacity over time identifying intermediate outcomes such as raising awareness of available assets facilitating events to connect previously unconnected community groups and to highlight funding opportunities. And I just wanted to pull out three quotes which illustrate the process of community colleagues working with their communities and groups and what it was that they highlighted as making a difference. So for example one person observed the speed and the depth of growth in knowledge and awareness both their own knowledge and that of community groups on what they were able to offer. Another reflected on the power of connections in building capacity in the community within formal groups becoming key supports to others in a community as a result of the intermediary role of the supermarket community colleagues. Related to this was the impact of facilitating links or referrals and convening different groups together as another community colleague reflected on actually following a meeting set out set up but from our field work. Finally this phrase ran true amongst community colleagues from different stores and different organizations even though there were differences in the way that they work be a connector of people not a collector of people. And so we're using the theoretical underpinning and the hypothesized pathways when we analyse these narratives of community colleagues and the wider stakeholders we've consulted with over the course of the study. I'm just going to hand her back to Catherine now. Thank you. Okay so yeah we thought it would be good to bring to life some of what we found out by briefly outlining two examples from the case studies. You'll hear time resources and developing connections being highlighted. The first thing yet I thought I'd share is one of our community champion stars. This is the story of her realisation that being strategic is important in decision making and the impact that she has had over time supporting individual groups. She joined the supermarket part-time whilst at uni in 2015 and became a champion a year later once she finished her degree. In this quote she explains that for the first two years of being a champion she understood her role she undertook her role rather in a transactional way but by 2019 she recognised that there was something missing and she began to look at ways to work more strategically identify need and linking in with organisations who are working to meet that need bringing different sectors that support community locally together. She talks about fairness as well as using her toolbox of support which she mentioned included giving financial support hosting groups in store raising awareness of local good causes and driving actions for better lives like going into schools to run healthy eating sessions. One of the metrics that she shared with us was the number of groups funded as shown in this graph and you can see that they grew steadily over time indicating her impact in terms of reach. Caroline and I were delighted to hear recently that she's just accepted a job to work at head office in the foundations team where we're sure that she'll bring her thoughtful approach and grassroots knowledge to the benefit of all. Turning now to another inspiring champion she began working at the supermarket in the place where she lives when she left school 20 years ago and was made a champion two years ago. She talked movingly about the needs of her community whether that was the loneliness of old people the mental health struggles of those with problems with drugs and alcohol all the poverty which was particularly visible for her among school-age children. She definitely felt that being grounded in the community all her life gave her a strong insight into how she could make a difference. She valued what she called her amazing community which made her job easy. However if you look at the two pie charts here her impact is clear to see the one on the left is a summary from all the case study to converts across the country where support is being received so roughly showing that that has been roughly across all categories. Then look at the other chart which is the local vote on what they would like to see more of in the future in that place and it's dramatically different and shows an overwhelming support of the role of the community champion. Typically modest and you can see her quote here about the ripple effect she made the point that it's not just one person in the role of community colleague it's the whole store and every colleague has a role to play in supporting the community agenda. I was particularly struck by how important this could be when I talked to the dental store manager who'd been asked by the champion to go with her to visit a local youth project literally across the car park from the store. He was impressed by what he saw and asked how he could help. They said that what would make the biggest difference to their access was giving the parents jobs. So now when they hold a recruitment drive the parents are supported in filling in the application forms and giving access to computers so that they can apply. So just one example of where the community champion people focused approach has had a significant impact. I'd like to finish up by showing you this quote from a local charity CEO who attended the group discussion in the store. She pointed out how the community champion has also shifted negative perceptions about the store in the two years that she's been in post. A win-win in this case for both the community and the business. Thanks Catherine again and just to sort of really start summing up the final research stage involves validating those pathways to impact with wider stakeholders and we'll be doing that by workshops in one of at least one of the case study areas firstly presenting our findings to cross sectoral stakeholders in Leeds. So we'll consider the sphere of influence in those workshops of the supermarket community actions is essentially a sort of a map around the systems influences over well-being so where they currently interact with other services priorities and influences locally on well-being and we'll be inviting reflections on their relative effectiveness to perceive value of the outcomes identified to different stakeholders and consider areas for potential development and collaboration to take forward on action on some of the concerns and priorities identified by the stakeholders in the case studies and all the community researchers in their work. We'd also like to hold as Catherine mentioned earlier some round table discussions at a national level with corporate and policy leaders. I just wanted to highlight quickly some of the influence the research itself is having and despite us still being in the midst of lots of analysis that we still have to do and ahead of the final reporting we've already seen some impact from both the emergent findings as well as the process and methodology that we've employed. So for example the methods that we've adopted in the case study and the peer research have already provoked new networking and connections leading to action so the image on the left there the images on the left show the results of a new partnership developed around school uniform school uniform donations in response to the cost of living crisis and that was brought about by a fieldwork discussion that we would put together for the research. The research has also gained traction in the industry with a recent article in the Grocer Special Goodness Edition and in terms of influence on corporate strategy Asra highlighted the influence of our research on aspects of their community programs specifically the spaces and places pillar of activity. We've also had some engagement with development of wider policy on place-based working and inequalities contributing a case study for the consultation on the health disparities white paper for business for health and we've shared a draft of our forthcoming working paper here with colleagues at the department for health and social care. Finally we're considering how to apply this learning about anchor positioning and place-based strategies across other business sectors in our own local community in Cambridge. Obviously Cambridge is widely reported to be the most unequal city in the UK and we want to use this work with CISL and the central Cambridge positioning of our new Entopia building to find ways to support co-production and cross-sectoral movements for improvement to community well-being within the city. Finally here's our contact details if you want to get in touch with us and I really would encourage if you want to have some more discussion on the research or talk to us a bit more about the findings and we're really keen and want to have those discussions widely and as well as some reference to the fellowship publications where you can read a little bit more about the academic thinking around the study and the forthcoming working paper at CISL working paper that Catherine mentioned earlier. So we'll wrap up there. Thank you so much for listening to us so far and we're happy to answer some questions and have some for the discussion. Thanks so much. So thank you Caroline. Thank you Catherine. That was absolutely wonderful. I mean the work you've been doing is fascinating and fantastic and I think particularly the last slides I've like shown and given a really great overview of the real-life impact your work is already having and also with a look forward. Again we've already had some questions coming in from the audience so please do use that either the chat function or the common function on LinkedIn and go to to submit any questions you might have. Just to kick us off a little bit so Caroline Catherine so you've talked quite a lot about the rich history that supermarkets have in helping local communities which a lot of it is focused on philanthropy however I think a lot of the things that you've described have been going above and beyond philanthropy so if I could two-part question there so sort of one side is like why do you think supermarkets should go beyond philanthropy and where are the limits of tradition of philanthropy to help local communities? Thanks Janet. I think I think that Catherine might have something to say about that one. Right thanks. I mean yeah no I mean in terms of it just think about corporate social responsibility obviously you know we understand that there are things which businesses have to do you know they're staturally required to or legally bound to and then there are you know society's expectations but yes our research has certainly focused on that discretionary perhaps what used to be called philanthropic activity and it's an interesting one and I think perhaps one of those vignettes that I talked about kind of highlights the importance of you know what the business can get out of it as well as what the community gets out of it where the community champion genuinely it had been quite a tricky place where you know the big store had seen a decline in the numbers of retailers in the town and just by being that open face and engaging with the community and showing that they really cared and that they really could make a difference it turned around how people saw that store. Now bear in mind that place I think that the supermarket itself was in fact the biggest employer and so you know you want to have that positive view of a business so that you can attract the best of so it is kind of win-win and I think that on the broader stage obviously investors are looking to see how businesses operate and showing that they care about their local place is so important and after all we all have local supermarkets we all understand that we feel connected to those places and if the pandemic showed us anything it was that you know those were places that were open and where people felt that they could go and could meet people albeit in a socially distanced way you know that that really highlighted how important they are as anchors in the face. I think you know I think you make a lot of very important points there about so the responsibility and also the potential that there is for supermarkets to kind of make that extra step to kind of like take on that mantle as an anchor institution however kind of reflecting on sort of like that stepping up role kind of like I think we've obviously talked about a lot about all the benefits that come with that so the wonderful things a supermarket can do but do either of you also for example see a certain element of risk in if actually a lot of what traditionally used to be public services are being taken up or offered by let's say big chains into big supermarket chains like for example like for example ASDA if or do you actually see that normally was a remit of public services should remain with public services so do you see a risk if actually supermarkets step up into that role or that void that has been created okay so I think I think you're doing so you're the I think what your question is getting at is the is our supermarkets stepping into plug the gaps that are being left by public services stripping back their actions I think is what you're talking about I don't I don't think that I don't see that in this in the same way I mean I think one of the one of the interesting potentials is is the the role of the supermarkets is that everyday space I don't think it's it's replicating services that that would otherwise be funded or delivered through statutory bodies I think I think the the one of the most interesting potentials is in terms of reaching people that are not in contact with services and I think in that sort of feeds into a in a prevention agenda to avoid sort of escalation of more expensive service use later or later on down the line I mean the reality is at the same time that the austerity has been affecting what's able to be delivered within statutory budgets for some time and I think there's areas where where civil society and business has always had a bit of a role and I think whereas perhaps in the past it might have been in more sort of paternalistic models like things with roundtree and Bourneville and Salter but actually we're important to be there for the interesting things would be how to deliver that in a more empowering way of engaging communities which actually gives them a voice which perhaps was not so much the more typical model I don't know yeah I think that's that's all I have to say on that one the other thing that I would say is that you know talking about everyday spaces is that we were given examples of where you know a supermarket is a place without stigma for some people to go so that where they might feel awkward about going into a provision that was labeled in some way that is not the case with a supermarket and you know that is something that they can bring that's additional so I think it's we're looking at those ways in which it generates more rather than necessarily looking to step into the breach I guess yeah it's absolutely Catherine and knows the example that you gave on the talking shop there that we investigated through this research discovered some really innovative practice which had been set up between the community champion and social work team and really sort of exploiting the that everyday space and the lack of stigma and really already sort of narrative accounts of avoidance of harm for people in that community whether that's through debt and welfare crisis or whether it's domestic abuse so yeah so I think it's the interesting space about where you might be able to do some things differently particularly around the prevention of agenda rather than plugging gaps so much and we also found sorry we also found groups that were working with you know normal providers who said well if they knew for example that there was going to be a well being session held in a cafe that was excellent because they didn't have to look for a place make sure that it was you know something that they could prescribe they could just say you know this is being held we should go and it was open to people so you know there are lots of different nuances around that so instead of like more of a let's say the stepping up plugging a get plugging a gap of replacing services so you kind of like found the niche more sort of like the responsibility and opportunities more in the convening and empowering sort of the local community like making their voices being heard and connecting them to the right services rather than replacing the services which I think is an absolutely fantastic role to be in sort of that convening connector stage as a retailer with also physical presence in the local community I think that's absolutely sorry Caroline I was just going to add an extra point you just made me think about that then in terms of one of the the additional study we did looking at more sort of at older adults and the potential for supermarkets to play a role with older adults in the community so I mean that could be a role and there's certainly one of the things that we're hearing is sort of an unmet need for for example lunch clubs both sort of forming part of performing a obviously a food provision but also potentially of of good nutrition for older adults so that sort of food security but also nutritional risk that might be might be there amongst older adults but equally and stores with cafes potentially could be something that that would be very much in demand and could be an area of interest that would be would perhaps plug a plug a gap or at least do be some cost savings therefore for some straps of authority so something to discuss I think quite specifically in some areas and we also we also found examples of where not only where there were cafes but where the champions were able to go out and talk about nutrition and and provide in a kind of a non-stigmatising way again kind of some food to people in need so that they weren't seem to be going to a food bank but they were there to hear about how you could cook nutritional cheap meals and more distributed food at that point so that that was a different way and the other thing of course which came through I think in every discussion we had is about how supermarkets and the colleagues there can help with loneliness and especially I guess with older adults you know that that is their time to go in and have social interaction and that is that is happening every day across every supermarket I'm absolutely sure we did hear some very you know heart-rending stories of where community champions or member pioneers have gone that extra mile and really made a difference you know there was a whole wealth of information there so you know that's another aspect which I think we need to kind of cherish and recognise you know I'm conscious that we're slowly running out of time so I'd quite like to move into the next question if that's all right like I know this is absolutely fascinating and we can obviously talk about all the aspects like for a long time but given that you've just mentioned sort of like the the food aspect in one of the questions that also came up was actually that it is wonderful like all of the work that supermarkets are doing however looking at the co-operating model also like the products for example that are on sale you know you're still looking at enablers of sometimes toxic food environments by supermarkets they're continuing to sell the foods like alcohol sugary foods highly processed foods junk foods in general so like how can you so do you kind of see like a tension there between their so their ambitions what they do for the local community but then actually also the foods and products and actually the core business of what they sell sure it's a good question and one that's unavoidable unavoidable sorry yeah I think there is obviously a tension this piece of research is very specifically focused on on the community focused actions by partly through capacity and what you can cover within a research study but also pragmatically to to through a focus on well these actions are happening anyway so how can we make sure that they happen to make sure that they're happening to the best value that you can get out of them but I think the system's lens that we also bring into the the study is to ensure that we don't lose sight of the the perhaps less positive side and commercial determinants of health that are also miniaturatively linked to supermarkets but I sense I guess through what we've tried to do within this is to focusing at least on the areas where there is value and try to understand what that value is and if you talk about those areas you can also at the same time acknowledge and bring shed a light on the other areas which are perhaps more harmful and wear out wear collaborations which we definitely would say would be one of the things that we'd like to see more of locally that those kind of conversations about what works well and can also raise those conversations about what the issues are within those communities and actually quite a lot of actions which may be more on the business side of operations actually undermining some of the the actions that are more positive so I think you know with with raising and you know to as then champion what is working well and what's what's of value then it enables a platform to discuss some of the aspects that are more difficult absolutely I think that was that was a wonderful summary of kind of like where there's still space for both but also kind of raising that there are some hard questions that I think that this work is uncovered and still needs addressing going forward like say I'm conscious of time so I'll close with one with one last question however do please keep the questions coming so like if we don't get to yours we'll try to answer them afterwards or please also feel free to reach out to Caroline or Catherine directly with your question and we'll try to pick them up as best as we can and I think one of the questions I quite like to close with is of course what we've seen what everyone what all of us have seen by going into a supermarket is the rise of food prices we're facing now and you know energy crisis there's a general cost of living prices and I think there is a risk of compounding inequalities that were already compounded by Covid-19 so like supermarkets are struggling with their own cost prices but so very in your view given the recent cost of living crisis where do you still see a place for supermarkets to continue their work and what do you see sort of the future of this work given cost of living crisis I mean we have sorry Doris I was just gonna okay well I'll be short I think there's I think they have they obviously have got a role the very point the anchor positioning is that supermarkets customers and staff come from the local area so you know the cost of living is very real and it's very important to for staff and customers to be able to to address this and equally in terms of sorry I've lost my track now Catherine come in I'll come back so now I was just going to say that you know because we're tracking the CSR initiatives we have seen some different initiatives coming forward which are trying to look at more of the cost of living crisis but I think you know we should get some confidence by the agility that we saw through the actions of the supermarkets over the COVID-19 outbreak and actually that has pushed forward things and I think hopefully our study will help to really set this strongly on the agendas of the supermarkets so that they can see that putting effort and time and money into supporting the resilience and well-being of their communities really will have an impact and a beneficial impact Thanks Catherine I remembered what I was going to say now and so yeah so effectively I think I think that's right and I think what we have we did see in COVID was really positive but I think what it also to me sort of flags of slight risk in that in those times of crisis the actions do tend to sort of focus more on emergency help and basically these which is of course super important but at the same time there's a bit of a risk there that you may move away or these preventative work becomes a little bit less prioritised and in terms of sort of building resilience to future and being able to bounce back from some of these crises I think the resilience work around creating connections in communities ensuring that wages keep up with cost of living rises then those are actually as important as there's the emergency support so you know let's do both please I think that was a wonderful like finish and a good call to action let's do let's do both let's carry on that conversation and thank you so much for taking the time to walking walking all of us through your wonderful work and I know you've been like you've been working hard on what you've been putting together and definitely the results were worth it and very much looking forward to see what comes next out of your work and as Caroline mentioned which is also extended on the screen there is a working paper forthcoming from this work which should be published published shortly where you can actually read more from supermarkets and their role in fostering community well-being thank you so much Catherine thank you Caroline and enjoy the rest of your day thank you all thank you bye bye bye