Reality Bites

In October 2019, SCLU embarked on a mission to make people aware of how hard it is to live on a small budget. To get the message out there they created the “Reality Cheque Challenge” where we asked people (Including the Director and Manager of the Leaving Care Service) to live on a budget of just £24 for a week. This amount was calculated by looking at how much someone on Universal Credit would receive, and then taking off money for bills and rent. Click here for more info about the challenge. 

Oreo Truffles Cooking Kit

Pizza Cooking Kit

Khalil making meatballs - The video is on our YouTube page

Callum - One of our YouTube chefs

Cheesecake Cooking Kit

One of things people found out was that cooking tasty, healthy recipes on a small
budget is HARD! So as a group we thought it would be really helpful to put together
some budget friendly recipes and create our very own Care Leaver cookbook called Reality Bites. This book is filled to the brim with savoury and sweet recipes that we hope people love. When we created the cookbook we wanted every care leaver in Sheffield to have one and so The JG Graves Trust gave us some money so we could get them all printed. The cookbooks have now been given out to all the care leavers in Sheffield. 

As well as creating the cookbook we also worked alongside the Leaving Care Service to create budget friendly cooking kits for care leavers which gave them a recipe card and all the ingredients they needed to make a tasty meal. Cook-a-long videos were also recorded and shared on our YouTube page. The cooking kits includes pasta bake, quiche, cookies and pizza. Over 1000 cooking kits were sent out between March 2020 and December 2021, including some to care leavers living outside of Sheffield. The feedback for the kits was amazing and we hope to continue to create cooking kits reguarly in the future. 

Our Reality Bites cookbook is available to buy. If you would like a copy please contact tanya.ward@sheffield.gov.uk