{"id":585846,"date":"2026-04-04T22:40:19","date_gmt":"2026-04-04T22:40:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/585846\/"},"modified":"2026-04-04T22:40:19","modified_gmt":"2026-04-04T22:40:19","slug":"ipswich-community-cooking-group-fostering-social-connection-through-shared-love-language","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/585846\/","title":{"rendered":"Ipswich community cooking group fostering social connection through shared love language"},"content":{"rendered":"

Gailes resident Janet French has never believed the saying ‘too many cooks spoil the broth’.<\/p>\n

In fact, she relies on about 10 of them every week at a community cooking group she has been part of on and off for two decades.<\/p>\n

“I’ve been on my own for about 40 years. When I was working I didn’t come as often, but when I retired I started coming back down again and I think it’s the best thing ever,” Ms French said.<\/p>\n

Today the Gailes Community House weekly cooking group is a well-oiled machine.<\/p>\n

\"Collage\"<\/p>\n

For more than 20 years the cooking group has supported residents on the border between Brisbane and Ipswich. (Supplied: Donna Baines-Faye)<\/p>\n

Between the hours of 10am and 12pm on a Tuesday morning, the home’s modest dining room is bustling.<\/p>\n

Vegetables are chopped, eggs beaten, coffees poured and stories from the last week traded.<\/p>\n

“You’re not asked to do anything if you don’t want,” Ms French said.<\/p>\n

“Shy people, quiet people, it suits them really good. They can get tea, coffee and they don’t have to pay.”<\/p>\n

A love language<\/p>\n

The cooking group is one of the most enduring programs at Gailes Community House, which was set up in 2002 for people needing support on the border between Brisbane and Ipswich.<\/p>\n

“It obviously meets a physical need of being fed, but it’s so much more,” centre manager Donna Baines-Faye said.<\/p>\n

“Because for many people, that’s their love language, that’s their way of connecting with family and community.”<\/p>\n

Ms Baines-Faye said she is always amazed by the group’s ability to turn leftovers from donated food into healthy and tasty meals.<\/p>\n

“They’re very good at looking in the cupboard and creating something [from not much].”<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Gailes Community House manager Donna Baines-Faye says the community cooking group are experts at converting left-overs into gourmet meals. (ABC News: Charlie Mclean)<\/p>\n

“But also because they come from all walks of life and they all have different food experience … they’re able to kind of share that knowledge.”<\/p>\n

Among the regulars is Poutharack Ratsamyvong who came to Australia after fleeing her home country.<\/p>\n

“[For] more than 35 years I was a Buddhist nun in Laos and one day a soldier wanted to put me in prison and I escaped. I swam from Laos to Thailand by the Mekong River,” she said.<\/p>\n

Eventually Ms Poutharack came to Australia after her sister, who was living in Cairns, sponsored her for a visa.<\/p>\n

\"Elderly<\/p>\n

Poutharack Ratsamyvong came to Australia after fleeing her home country of Laos. (ABC News)<\/p>\n

“I have post-traumatic stress because bombs, guns, many things.”<\/p>\n

She said joining the cooking group had helped her heal in the years since moving to Brisbane by herself.<\/p>\n

“The first [volunteer] she asked me ‘you live with whom?’ I said ‘by myself’.<\/p>\n

“She said ‘here is your family. Anything happen to you, you come to this family.'”<\/p>\n

Benefits of ‘social prescribing’<\/p>\n

Among the Australian medical community, there is rising interest in ‘socially prescribing’ programs like the cooking group to people experiencing loneliness, alongside conventional clinical services.<\/p>\n

Social prescribing is already common practice in some countries, including the United Kingdom, and the term appeared 23 times in a 2025 World Health Organisation report<\/a> on loneliness.<\/p>\n

In 2024, University of Queensland researchers studied more than 100 people experiencing loneliness. Roughly half were being treated solely by a doctor and the rest were additionally attending a social prescribing program.<\/p>\n

\"Low<\/p>\n

The idea of ‘socially prescribing’ groups to people experiencing loneliness is gaining traction in the Australia medical community. (ABC News: Charlie Mclean)<\/p>\n

“We found that the number of meaningful social groups that [the social prescribing] participants belonged to increased from two groups at baselines to three groups 8-weeks later,” UQ clinical psychology professor Genevieve Dingle said.<\/p>\n

“And this average of three groups was maintained at [an] 18-months follow up.”<\/p>\n

Professor Dingle said a UK study of 20,000 people given a social prescribing referral for up to 6 months found even greater wellbeing improvements.<\/p>\n

“If more people were getting their social needs met through social prescribing, GPs and other health professionals would have time and resources to spend with patients presenting with medical concerns,” she said.<\/p>\n

First step the hardest<\/p>\n

Janet French was among the group of Gailes residents who founded the community house.<\/p>\n

She said over the years, she had noticed people had become more hesitant to join things like the cooking group.<\/p>\n

\"An<\/p>\n

Gailes Community House co-founder Janet French said seeing new faces at the cooking group had become less common over time. (ABC News: Charlie Mclean)<\/p>\n

“We are a bit scared coming out on our own … omen especially, because it’s not a very safe world these days.” she said.<\/p>\n

“So I think if you can just do that, take that first step to come … all the girls will just welcome you and they’ll help you out.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Gailes resident Janet French has never believed the saying ‘too many cooks spoil the broth’. In fact, she…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":585847,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,5214,286760,17011,16829,286759,9368,286761,514,44,200147,286762,145045,7594],"class_list":{"0":"post-585846","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-australia","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-community","11":"tag-community-group","12":"tag-connection","13":"tag-cooking","14":"tag-cooking-group","15":"tag-friendship","16":"tag-gailes-community-house","17":"tag-mental-health","18":"tag-news","19":"tag-social-connection","20":"tag-social-prescribing","21":"tag-socialising","22":"tag-wellbeing"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/585846","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=585846"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/585846\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/585847"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=585846"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=585846"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=585846"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}