Dispatches From the Frontline of Economic Inequality in a Time of Covid
What data from Manchester’s leading food support agencies and professionals tells us about food insecurity and the challenges of food provision for those who need it most.
The Growing Challenge of Food Insecurity in the UK
With years of austerity, layers of clumsy social security reform, benefit sanctioning, and the growing unaffordability of basic foods, food insecurity in the UK has reached staggering proportions.
The evidence is all around us, with the Trussell Trust reporting that distribution of three-day emergency food parcels increased by 74% between 2015 and 2020. UK food insecurity has quadrupled to impact 16% of the British population, with 3 million people now living in households where someone has to skip meals (Loopstra 2020).
As if things weren’t difficult enough, the financial, social and health impacts of Brexit and Covid have also added new complexity and challenge to the job of feeding hungry people.
Food Banks – a focal point of wider social ills?
A new paper, Food support provision in COVID-19 times by Manchester University academic Filippo Oncini explores how voluntary food provision such as holiday hunger programmes, community kitchens, soup vans, food pantries and especially the modern food bank, an often emotive and highly visible representation of people’s daily struggles, have become a focal point of so much more than just the distribution of essential food for the hungry.
‘The depth of contemporary poverty in Britain would be less visible without them, as food banks also act as advocates for the development of a more equitable welfare regime and food system,’ he writes.
With the voluntary, community and social enterprise sector (VCSE), at the forefront of picking up the Government’s austerity slack, Oncini’s unique data set on 55 food support organizations, and 41 semi-structured interviews sheds a fascinating light on the challenges faced and responses put in place immediately after the epidemic’s peak.
‘In a sense, there was no other apparatus as ready, skilled and qualified as the VCSE for tackling the rapidly rising levels of food insecurity, as the state was already directing vulnerable citizens to charitable food provision before COVID-19”.
The Covid 19 Response
Already familiar with Greater Manchester’s high poverty levels, the council’s voluntary/private partnership along with third sector ‘parallel welfare’ delivered 30,000 requested emergency food parcels from March to May. A coordinated council-led effort to ‘absorb the most imperative needs that emerged after the outbreak.’
‘Most food support providers did not turn eligible people away, even when volunteer and staff capacity was lacking or because food in stock was in short supply.’
The ability to adapt and improvise food collection, preparation and delivery, plus many organizations experiencing an increase in donations of food (76.4% of sample) or money (67.3%) with 85.5% (47 cases) reporting one of the two and more than half reporting both (32 cases, 58.2%), all seem to have contributed to what Oncini describes as:
‘The extraordinary success of food aid services in tackling the crisis.’
That’s despite staff shortages and higher workloads as volunteers isolated or fell ill, the occasional lack of fresh products such as meat, cheese, fruit and vegetables and of course the long term uncertainty that the pandemic brought.
The Social Ingredient at the Core of any Form of Support
As with many other aspects of life under Covid, and especially so when it comes to welfare and social provision, it’s been the softer, social, human side of support that has suffered most – ‘the financial advice, empathic listening and human warmth were partially lost, probably when they were needed more than ever,’ said Oncini.
Citing (Cloke et al. 2017), ‘Food banks also offer a ‘space of care’ characterised by acceptance, moral support, generosity, hospitality and advice, as well as a ‘liminal space’ of encounter’ between marginal groups, volunteers and staff members that could potentially lead to new political and ethical engagements’
The report also quotes a number of interviewees who share their personal experiences.
‘The difficulty when you’re seeing somebody crying, [is] not to give them a hug,’ Innes, Mixed food provider.
‘For a lot of these people, it’s not just the food. It’s the social aspect,’ Jane, Independent food bank.
And what about the opportunity costs of the enormous energy expended by the VCSEs to feed those most in need throughout the pandemic?
Concludes Oncini, ‘One might wonder whether, if the welfare state had been better able to take care of the most disadvantaged members of our societies, the many VCSE organizations solely dedicated to distributing food support during the crisis could have redirected their efforts towards many other forms of social inclusion, tailored on other needs of their users.’
You can read the full research document here.