Ten years on from the foundation and expansion of the first Trussell Trust foodbank in Salisbury I shared this reflection with a group of community activists. As we now approach the twentieth anniversary it’s disheartening to look around the now massively-expanded foodbank network and see how things have become so much worse for people struggling through poverty. When I wrote this we still understood foodbanks to be a short-term provider of assistance – perhaps for three or four days – while other organisations like Citizens Advice and the Department for Work and Pensions worked with people to access benefits and achieve some level of stability in their finances. We now know that for many people the foodbank is a source of much-needed longterm support. A recent report for the House of Commons Library summarises statistics from around the UK including this from the Trussell Trust, “In its May 2021 State of Hunger report, the Trussell Trust estimated around
2.5% of all UK households (700,000) used a food bank in 2019-20, prior to the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic.”
In 2004 the replication of Salisbury’s model of foodbank support for people in crisis was based on the assumption that numbers of referrals would be reasonably low. Ten years ago foodbanks were experiencing a level of need that felt shocking and unsustainable. Today, after the trauma of the pandemic, increased levels of poverty, and a cost of living crisis that will effect most households, the foodbanks are themselves struggling. What can we do to ensure that come the twentieth anniversary in 2024 we will see a return to the original vision of a little support for a few people who are experiencing unexpected times of difficulty?
Foodbanks – the continuing challenge (2014)
Across Dorset and Wiltshire we can rightly take heart from the great work that has been done by food banks in our area over the past ten years. The Trussell Trust which supports most of the food banks around the country started here in Salisbury and continues to have its base here. The food banks serve local communities in a very direct way doing exactly what many of us would regard as central to our Christian faith, feeding those who are hungry, serving people in need wherever they are. Over the past year [2013-2014], however, something very distressing has happened; the numbers of people turning to food banks has increased a lot so that since April some half a million people have been referred to them. Food banks rely on the donations provided by local people, and they rely on volunteers to do the work of sorting and distribution. The increase in the demand on food banks has placed incredible stress on them and great difficulty in collecting enough food to ensure that those who are referred will have something nourishing to see them through a difficult time in life.
It’s easy to come across comments that accuse the users of food banks as being undeserving, possible ‘scroungers’, people who refuse to work for a living and for the well-being of their families. The reality of what the food banks are seeing is much different. As Chris Mould who leads the Trussell Trust says, ‘We’re providing emergency food for people in crisis. It’s a huge unmet need…it’s not easy to get to the point where you have the courage…to use a food bank, or accept the suggestion of a professional that you should, and so there are loads of people who food banks could help who are not yet accessing that support.’
One in five mothers regularly skip meals so that they can feed their children. That’s not scrounging, that’s ordinary people struggling to make ends meet. Food banks report that many of their users call in on the way home from work. That’s not shirkers, that’s people trapped in low paid work that does not pay enough to cover the bills.
This situation has come about for all sorts of reasons. It is striking that if the richest ten percent of people in the country had the same share of national income as they had in the 1970s, the resulting distribution of wealth would wipe out poverty across the country. The dominance of part-time, low paid insecure work in our national economy, is at the very heart of this crisis. Increased levels of inequality, where the rich get richer and the poor get poorer have reached the inevitable point of obscene consumption by a few, and destitution for many.
5,500 people were admitted to hospital in the past year suffering from malnutrition, 250 people died in Wiltshire last winter because of the cold. (5,500 people were admitted to hospital in the UK for malnutrition this year compared with 3,000 in 2008).
Ordinary households have seen bills for food and energy increase while incomes have dropped. Food, for example, has gone up by 30% in five years, a time of supposedly low inflation and a time when workers have seen earnings remain static. In this area we have been encouraging people to support the Surviving Winter campaign run by Community Foundations that provides a bit of extra support to older people who struggle with the increased costs of heating. Lots of people are finding life difficult and we need to look at new ways of sharing wealth and costs so that everyone can maintain a reasonable standard of living.
The Bishop of Salisbury pointed to the need for the church to restore hope to people who are in crisis and feeling desperate: ‘In a society of payday loans, food and fuel poverty, increasing rents, high youth unemployment, and crisis situations arising from changes in benefits, our churches have a key role. We care for the individual and build hope in our communities by being like light, salt, yeast changing experience for the common good and renewing hope among those who feel desperate.’
This week the bishops of the Church of England supported the launch of a new campaign, End Hunger Fast. The campaign provides evidence of the growing inequalities in wealth across the country, the increased costs of living at a time of lower incomes, and the low pay that keeps people in poverty even when they are fully employed. In addition, recent changes in the social welfare system have placed many people who are in already precarious situations into crisis. Over half of people using food banks recently are doing so as a result of delays in payments, or the sanctioning or removal of benefits. Over half of people who appeal against sanctions win their appeals, and there are reports that organisations like the Royal National Institute for the Blind are supporting people through blatantly unfair decisions.
To work through all of this will take time. One of the things that a wealthy nation like the United Kingdom should be able to do is to ensure that people who are working actually get paid enough to provide a decent standard of living for them and their families. We need to invest in people, making sure that education and training enable everyone to fulfil their potential. We could ensure, for relatively little investment, that all children receive a good meal each day. We can strengthen systems of community support like the food banks so that there is a well-resourced charity sector that can look after people in crisis. And we have to ensure that the benefits system for people of working age is fair, quick to respond, and designed to make it easier to accept new jobs. Somewhere in that mix we have to find new ways of providing childcare and longterm support for people with real difficulties in the usual workplace setting.
It has been easy for some to criticise the End Hunger Fast campaign as being just an attack on the Government and a demand for increased benefits. In fact the campaign calls for fairer pay for those in work, for good community support systems, for a review of the supply and cost of food, as well as for a commitment to a ‘welfare system that provides a robust last line of defence against hunger’.
So please continue to support your local food banks, and support other local organisations that help people make connections with each other and share informal support and care. And join in the day of fasting in sympathy with the half a million people across the country who have no choice but to go hungry.
Colin Brady 