Our ever-growing need for food banks is an indictment on our society

This week, the Conservative government declared another General Election, to be held in December, which they hope they will win and which, if they do, they will take as a mandate to force Brexit through in whatever way they wish, parliament be damned.

This week, the charity that I work for, which runs a food bank as one of its main outreach arms, gave out over a hundred parcels. The charity is a church, St Catherine’s, in the heart of a poor parish in Wakefield, where local community links have always been important. When I first worked there in 2006/7, the food bank was barely worthy of the name. Food would be donated every year at Harvest Festival, and that little amount would be enough for the vicar to use their discretion to hand out parcels to people in need.

In 2012, two years after Tory austerity started, St Catherine’s saw use of the food bank spike and attributed it to the removal of crisis loans, which left many people without money. Since then, the figures have risen year on year and mostly now are rising because of the roll out of Universal Credit. This is the same reason given by the Guardian article referenced below. As people are swapped to the new benefit, delays mean they’re left without money for up to five weeks. Bills are missed, food isn’t purchased. Parents go hungry so that children can be fed. In the holidays, kids go hungry because they don’t get their free school meal at lunchtime. Lunch clubs have sprung up for this exact reason. St Catherine’s depends on the kindness of others to fund the food bank with donations of both food and money. Many local supermarkets donate unsold food, especially items such as milk or eggs, which is good because it helps to curb food waste. We also have a small baby bank, stocking items like nappies and wipes, that parents can access when in need.

Food bank users are a diverse lot, from single people to people with several children. My boss, centre manager Lisa, who has worked at St Catherine’s for the best part of two decades, says that many of them are people with mental health problems who find it difficult to navigate the benefits system or who have applied for disability benefits and not been successful, or who have had them taken away. She says that anecdotally many of them have been sanctioned by the Job Centre, although the Job Centre swears this isn’t happening. She says for a lot of them, the situations that mean they have to seek help in a food bank may well have been preventable, but cuts to mental health services mean they haven’t been able to access help there either. She says too that many charities set up to help aren’t able to either – for example, Christians Against Poverty has had to stop taking on new cases, and their waiting lists in the area are around three months.

This week the Guardian published this opinion piece on the publication of a story book about a little girl and her mother who visit a food bank. As someone who writes for children, I do believe that there is a need for this story. Children’s and Young Adult literature seeks to represent the lives of those reading it. It seeks to speak to them on their level. I’m glad that a child visiting a food bank can see themselves on paper and understand that their lives matter. I’m glad too that more privileged kids can read this book and get a glimpse of a life different from their own. But I agree that it’s a damning indication of where Britain is as a society.

This year, St Catherine’s will give out probably over eight thousand parcels. That’s eight thousand families in need in just one area. The election will be fought on Brexit, and currently the most hopeful I can be is that there’ll be a hung parliament and another coalition government, but in that melee the most vulnerable in society get forgotten or ignored, and charities are left to pick up the slack. I’m proud of the work St Catherine’s does – but I wish the food bank didn’t have to exist.

Image credit: Birmingham City Council