Food banks statistics and why people go to them?
Trussell Trust presents insights that were conducted by Oxford (comissioned to research and interview 400 households on food banks) as to why people end up going to food banks. Added with some examples from Parliament.UK on the relation of Covid and food banks increases.
Why do individuals and families go to food banks and get referred?
Financial and Food Insecurities: Their financial stability week to week and month to month are unsteady, resulting in 78% of individuals and families skipping meals (whether it be just meals, whole days, or several days) while half of them cannot afford even toiletries nor heating.
Rise in Pricings: 3/5 Households saw a rise in food prices, with 25% on a tight budget and cannot afford as much of it because of the price inflation on food.
Debt: 1/3 of the households researched are struggling to earn enough money to payback outstanding loans, as well as 1/5 needing to repay payday loaner.
Disability: Half of the people in this research are those with physical disabilities and 75% suffer from mental health
Housing: 28% of people noticed and experienced the rise in housing costs, with private housing being difficult to keep up with the rents.
Donna’s story
Donna’s story is a first hand experience as to why people go to food banks, but what they feel before and after.
She had 2 mini-strokes, was hospitalised from them, and couldn’t get sick pay. She was 44, had 3 kids and food was getting more scarce.
She felt scared going to a food bank, but she didn’t want to risk being lent money she couldn’t pay back
“I sat in the car park for about ten minutes getting the courage to go in” was how she felt beforehand.
“but the welcome that I got through the doors was just phenomenal, I felt so at ease. They listened and offered me tea. It was so nice and family-based” was how she felt afterwards.
And when she got better and her life came backa round, she volenteered to give back. This shows the strength in the food bank’s servie, and people come because it’s a safer option.
Covid 19 and Food Banks
There has been an alarming increase in food bank usage over the past 15 years, shown by this report (shown in figure 1). While it has been steady from 2005 to 2010, 2011 has seen a massive increase from about 0.2 million to 2.5 within 10 years for Trussell Trust.
Trussel Trust has started in 2000, and since then it has been providing half the UK’s food banks, with 1,300 counted from February of this year (2021).
However, the 2020 to 2021 has seen a 33% increase in 3 day food bank parcels, and between April to September of 2020, there was a 47% increase. Apparently, a lot of these parcels are also going to kids.
In June of 2020, they the report provided information from Trussel Trust, about their increases.
Children had a 107% increase in needing food, the number of food parcels that were distributed went up by 87%, and a 67% rise of household referrals occurred.
Because of the pandemic, 1.5 million people who were deemed most vulnerable had to be ‘shielded’ home for 12 weeks.
The problem was that people started to lose their jobs or have a reduction in income, making hard to buy food. Not only that, but some people lacked a support network in order to provide them with the food that they needed, but they were offered free food via support and community groups.
https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/CBP-8585/CBP-8585.pdf
