‘Ask The Question’ celebrates resounding success of their ‘Never Hungry Again’ course

Ask The Question CIC, the Hebden Bridge based fund which provides Calderdale children with the opportunity to access private tuition and mentorship, has praised the Community Foundation For Calderdale for their support, which enabled them to provide an informative course to students to educate them about the benefits of healthy living.

The course, which was carried out over 10 weeks, worked alongside a group of 20 students aged 13-18 from around Calderdale who had experienced adverse childhood experiences, and the majority of which had experienced local authority care.

The aim was to inform the students what a ‘healthy lifestyle’ looked like ahead of them moving to independent living in the future.

The students were asked before starting the course how confident they felt about carrying out certain domestic tasks and responsibilities, including building a healthy lifestyle. 85 per cent of the students asked didn’t feel confident about living independently, including having the ability to budget for a home, cook healthy meals, look after their mental and physical health, be aware of drug and alcohol misuse, and protect their sexual health.

The course, funded as part of the ‘Never Hungry Again’ initiative, has been a resounding success, with 100 per cent of the students now marking that they were now much more confident having taken the course about living independently. The students included looked-after children who are moving to independent living in the next few years, young carers, and young people who were adopted late in life and missed out on many of the nutritional benefits of a secure early-years environment.

Jo Austin, founder of Ask The Question, said: “Our course really has been a phenomenal success, with 100 per cent of the students we worked with saying that they now felt much more confident that they were able to build a healthy, happy home ahead of their move to independent living. It’s been an absolute pleasure working alongside the Community Foundation For Calderdale, who do excellent work in the community, and we’ve already had a significant demand to run this course again, so we hope to run this course again in the future.”

Steve Duncan, CEO of the Community Foundation for Calderdale, added: “We recognised that providing the funding to run this course would not just give young people skills that they will use for the next 6 months, these are valuable skills that they will use for life and will help them lead a healthier life too.”