Author: Sahar Faghidno
Faghidno, Sahar, 2025 Exploring Food Relief Clients’ Journeys, Experiences and Outcomes Across the Social Support System in South Australia, Flinders University, College of Business, Government and Law
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Access to food is a human right, and everyone should be able to obtain food in a dignified way. In 2020, between 4 and 13% of households did not have enough access to nutritious, safe and culturally relevant food – a situation that is referred to as food insecurity. Food insecurity is a symptom of poverty, as well as of economic and social disadvantage. Food relief is a response to addressing food insecurity and originally began as an act of charity and was meant to offer a short-term solution. However, many people have become chronically reliant on food relief, which indicates the ineffectiveness of current food relief responses, as it fails to provide a pathway out of chronic precarity. Studies have explored food relief clients’ experiences with different food relief services. However, no studies have explored clients’ experiences and journeys across intersecting systems through the application of a so called ‘systems lens’ (including multiple intersecting social services and sectors, e.g., food relief, housing authorities, family support) to address underlying causes of food insecurity, not only the symptoms (the lack of food).
This thesis is an integral part of a larger research program that was funded by the Australian Research Council Linkage Project, Towards Zero Hunger: Improving Food Relief Services in Australia, and was conducted under the guidance of the research team (who are supervisors of this thesis), in close collaboration with five industry partners: the Department of Human Services, Wellbeing SA, Foodbank South Australia, Anglicare SA and The Food Centre.
To address food insecurity (and its underlying causes), it is crucial to understand food relief clients’ journeys, experiences and outcomes as a result of accessing food relief services across the social support system. This will provide a better understanding of the role of food/food relief in facilitating connection to other social services. To date, studies have not documented food relief client journeys across the social support system over recipients’ lifetimes, including an evaluation of outcomes of food relief interventions. This thesis aimed to address this gap via three discrete studies, which are reported as separate journal chapters which have been formatted for publication as journal articles:
• Study 1: Beyond Sales to Social Impact: A Scoping Review of the Customer Journey Mapping Research Method
• Study 2: Exploring Food Relief Recipients’ Journeys across the Social Support System in South Australia
• Study 3: Social, Economic and Wellbeing Outcomes for Clients of South Australia’s First Social Supermarket
Study 1 contextualises the broader study and was a scoping literature review of Customer Journey Mapping (CJM) research method. CJM is a visual method that helps document client interactions with a service from the perspectives of end users. This study reviewed 70 peer-reviewed CJM studies in various disciplines and assessed whether it is an appropriate method to use with people in vulnerable situations. Results indicated that in-depth interviews were commonly used for data collection and confirmed that CJM was an appropriate method for engaging with such populations.
Study 2 used CJM to explore food relief clients’ journeys and experiences across the social support system. The data were collected in 21 in-depth interviews with food relief clients. This study was the first study to provide a visual map of the journey of a typical food relief client as they navigated the social support system in South Australia over their lifetime. Results indicate that food relief services, such as social supermarkets (SSMs) that provided access to affordable food and opportunities for social and other connections to services, might provide pathways to food security.
Study 3 developed an economic and social client outcomes evaluation survey and used it to evaluate South Australia’s first SSM, The Food Centre (TFC). A total of 174 TFC clients were surveyed about their food security, financial wellbeing, social connectedness and other individual-level outcomes before and after they interacted with TFC. Results indicate that TFC had a positive influence in its clients’ lives, including a 6% reduction in food insecurity, a 16% increase in the ability to deal with unexpected expenses, and a 57% increase in feeling socially connected. In addition to TFC being used as a long-term solution to access affordable food options, it was able to support clients so that they had better outcomes, including via facilitating regular social interactions.
In summary, the findings of this thesis emphasise that the South Australian social support system is disjointed, and its sectors and services often operate with limited collaboration with one another. People often only find out about food relief services quite late in their journeys. Hence, establishing a point of call for warm referrals (contacting other support services for or with a client) and system navigation (i.e. a ‘no wrong door’ referral system, or a ‘one-stop-shop’ triage service) could improve client journeys and help prevent people’s situations from worsening. A food relief service could serve this function, as shown by the SSM models, for example. Although such a point-of-contact could be effective for system navigation, it is also critical for food relief services to employ person-centred approaches to providing flexible and individualised solutions and connecting people to relevant support services, to opportunities to build social connections and to the community. After all, ‘people don’t really need a handout, they need a guide’ (participant, mid-50s). People need social connections to help them realise that they are not alone in their experiences, and to celebrate life while sharing food with others.
This thesis contributes new evidence on food relief clients’ journeys, experiences and outcomes across social support systems. It makes an important contribution to several fields of academic enquiry, such as improving food relief clients’ journeys, preventing people’s situations from exacerbating and creating a sustained and long-term pathway out of food insecurity and precarity. Finally, the thesis concludes with practical recommendations for practitioners working in social services and food relief and for policymakers designing the way the sector and services funded by that sector operate.
Keywords: Food security; customer journey mapping; social support services; social isolation; customer and volunteer experiences and outcomes; evaluation tool
Subject: Sociology thesis
Thesis type: Doctor of Philosophy
Completed: 2025
School: College of Business, Government and Law
Supervisor: Professor Svetlana Bogomolova