With the end of the Great British Bake Off leaving a void in our week, we chatted to Better Health Bakery – a team whose previous volunteers include #GBBO winner David Atherton – to get our fix of dough-related discussion points and find out about the social enterprise’s inspiring work.
Better Health Bakery serves up delicious danishes, cakes and cookies as well as its signature sourdoughs from the café and shop in East London. With lunch on offer on weekdays from 12pm, and pizza Fridays proving a roaring success with regulars, this social enterprise is going from strength to strength in pleasing its local community and with this year’s Great British Bake Off winner David Atherton among the team’s list of previous volunteers, we had to find out a bit more about the team and what’s in store… Lisa Donohue gave us the low-down.
How did Better Health Bakery begin?
Better Health Bakery is a social enterprise bakery based in Haggerston, East London. We are part of The Centre for Better Health, a long standing Hackney-based mental health charity which aims to support wellbeing and recovery from mental ill-health. The bakery came to fruition six years ago as part of this mission. As a social enterprise it offers trainee placements to adults who have been distanced from employment due to mental ill-health.
What’s the impact been so far?
31 trainees enrolled on our programme in 2018/19, with 18 completing their placements and successfully moving on to other opportunities. 100% of trainees that completed their placements reported an improvement in one or more of the following skill outcomes; job skills, motivation, routine, confidence and social skills. Six trainees have moved on to further training or eduction, seven to volunteering and five to employment.