From the Community"
"For the Community, And
ABOUT US
OUR ORIGINS
Food is Care is a dedicated non-profit organization committed to addressing food insecurity in marginalized communities. Founded by council estate single dad, Dominic Watters, our mission is not only to ensure that everyone has access to nutritious food, but that the most forgotten about people in forgotten about places do not continue to go unheard in these national discussions. We work tirelessly to make the invisible and silenced council estate communities across the UK heard in debates that disproportionately impact our food environment.
Food is Care believes that the communities most affected by food insecurity, fuel poverty, and structural inequality should not be the least heard in conversations about change.
Our vision is for communities too often overlooked, spoken about, or expected simply to “cope” to instead be recognised as central to shaping a fairer and more resilient food system.
We believe meaningful change begins by listening to and working alongside the people living these realities every day - not simply speaking on their behalf.
Through community-rooted research, collaboration, and action, Food is Care exists to help make the experiences, knowledge, and solutions that too often remain unseen, visible.
Food is Care did not begin as an organisation. It began as a challenge.
While studying social work as a single father experiencing food insecurity and housing instability, our founder Dominic Watters became increasingly aware of a striking gap within social work education, policy and professional guidance. Although poverty was frequently acknowledged, the everyday realities of food insecurity were often absent from the frameworks, standards and training used to prepare practitioners working with some of the country’s most disadvantaged families.
At the same time, evidence showed that families living in the most deprived communities were far more likely to have social workers involved in their lives. Yet one of the most immediate consequences of poverty – access to food – remained largely overlooked within professional guidance.
In response, Dominic launched Food is Care as a grassroots campaign. What started as a simple statement – that food is care, and that food insecurity should be recognised as a central concern of social care – grew into a programme of advocacy, training and policy engagement. Through conference presentations, professional training delivered to local authority teams across the country, published writing, national surveys and direct engagement with policymakers and sector leaders, Food is Care helped bring greater attention to the relationship between poverty, food insecurity and social work practice.
The campaign contributed to discussions within the profession and informed the development of updated practice guidance for social work educators. More importantly, it demonstrated the value of knowledge generated from lived and living experience of poverty.
That same principle continues to guide Food is Care today. Whether working with communities, researchers, policymakers or industry leaders, we begin from a simple belief: people experiencing food insecurity should not only be subjects of discussion. They should help shape the conversations, decisions and solutions that affect their lives.