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6 min read

Cost of living crisis: faith and food banks combine to tackle destitution and its causes

The Trussell Trust wants food banks in its network to reduce the need for their services. Robert Wright finds out why the trust regrets they still distribute so much food.

Robert is a journalist at the Financial Times.

 

A man stands in front of a food bank's shelves of cereals and boxes labelled by foot type.
Howard Wardle at Eastbourne's food bank.

When Howard Wardle was making plans to set up a food bank in Eastbourne, in East Sussex, he received little support from his fellow church leaders. Speaking in the industrial estate warehouse that has been the food bank’s headquarters since 2017, Wardle recalls how at a meeting called to discuss the idea he largely encountered bafflement. At the time, Wardle was pastor of the town’s Community Church. 

“They said, ‘There isn’t a need in the town – you’re wasting your time doing it’,” Wardle says of the meeting in 2011. 

Wardle nevertheless received encouragement from Eastbourne’s Citizens’ Advice Bureau, from the major of the local Salvation Army congregation, the local authority’s social services – and the Trussell Trust, the UK’s largest organiser of food banks. The food bank, of which Wardle is now chief executive, last year handed out 280,000 meals. 

Yet for Wardle and the Emma Revie, the Trussell Trust’s national chief executive, it is a matter of regret that its members are distributing so much food – organisations affiliated with the Trussell Trust handed out 2.99mn parcels in the year to March 2023. The figure was a 37 per cent increase on the year before, a rise largely down to the cost of living crisis started by the spikes in energy and food prices following Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. 

“It’s incredibly worrying and upsetting that so many people – more people – are having to come to food banks,” Revie says. 

Workers at the Eastbourne Foodbank and others nationally are following a strategy of campaigning for policies that seek to ensure no one needs to seek emergency food support. They also employ staff who help clients to navigate the benefits system, prepare for work or take other steps to find a permanent solution to their problems. 

“We were absolutely resolute that enough is enough. We needed to do whatever we needed to do to reduce the number of people needing to come to food banks.” 

Emma Revie

The Trussell Trust centrally provides organisational support for affiliated food banks but deliberately does not undertake functions such as purchasing food. 

Revie says it adopted the strategy of trying to put itself out of business five years ago, after experiencing significant growth in demand for its services. The trust was founded in 1997 in Salisbury by Carol and Paddy Henderson, a Christian couple. Christian principles have been core to the trust’s operations ever since. 

“We reached a decision point where we either had to accept that this situation was likely to increase and would always be needed or we had to decide that that was not acceptable and change the way we thought about our work,” Revie says. 

The trust recognised how inadequate food parcels were to the fundamental needs that member food banks were seeing among clients, she adds. 

“The reason people are coming to food banks is they don’t have enough money to afford the essentials,” Revie says. “They know it’s not going to put credit on the gas meter. They know it’s not going to pay for school shoes.” 

The organisation had to decide whether it accepted as inevitable that so many people needed its services or would reorient itself towards working to end that need, she adds. 

“We were absolutely resolute that enough is enough,” Revie says. “We needed to do whatever we needed to do to reduce the number of people needing to come to food banks.” 

“We’re not just here to get people on benefits. If we think they can work, we try to encourage people to get into work.” 

Robert Crockford

In Eastbourne, the strategy of reducing dependence on food banks has been in place from the start, according to Wardle. 

“When we started, we felt it was one thing to have a food bank giving out food but another to have people not need to come to food banks,” he says. 

After receiving some grant funding, the food bank took on staff to help clients to resolve their financial problems and ensure they were receiving all the welfare benefits to which they were entitled. 

“We built a welfare benefits team, a debt team and a medical benefits team so that we could help clients,” Wardle says. 

Robert Crockford, the food bank’s senior advocacy officer, says he helps food bank clients to navigate issues such as the two-child limit and the overall benefits cap that restrict the amount benefits recipients can receive. 

The two-child limit stops parents from receiving child benefit for any more than two children if the additional children were born after 2017. The benefit cap - £283.71 for a single person living outside Greater London – was introduced in 2013. It limits the total amount a person or family can receive from the system. 

Crockford explains that he seeks to help clients to explore whether they count as disabled, a carer or have some other status that might enable them to receive higher benefits. 

The group also works with People Matter, a charity that helps to prepare people for work. 

“We’re not just here to get people on benefits,” Crockford says. “If we think they can work, we try to encourage people to get into work.” 

Revie bemoans the overall inadequacy of the benefits system, pointing out that many recipients of Universal Credit – the main income-support benefit for most people who are unemployed or on low incomes in the UK – cannot afford food. 

“When almost half the people on that benefit are unable to afford food, something systematically is failing,” she says. “So do you tackle the symptoms or do you tackle the actual problem?” 

That emphasis on tackling problems is clear at another food bank affiliated with the trust – in Kingston, on the south-western edge of London. 

Ian Jacobs, director of Kingston Foodbank, says his organisation works closely with Citizens’ Advice to try to develop permanent solutions for people seeking help. 

“We do deep-dive investigations into people’s circumstances to try to see if we can get more money into people’s pockets,” he says. 

Kingston Foodbank currently operates six foodbank centres and one pantry, where referred clients can select and buy reduced-price food. Jacobs says he would like one day to reverse the proportion, so that it operates six pantries and one food bank. 

Jacobs, a member of the Doxa Deo Community Church, an independent evangelical church, also makes it clear that many volunteers are working at the food bank out of Christian conviction. 

“We’re always open to pray with clients,” he says. 

Revie says the trust is “deeply rooted” in the local churches. 

“Many of our volunteers and staff are motivated in the work that they do by their Christian faith,” she says. “Our values of community, compassion, dignity and justice are deeply rooted in the Christian faith.” 

Revie points out that the trust was founded by Christians and that its network grew through approaches by individual churches to the trust. 
"We as an organisation work with people of all faiths and none and we certainly support people of all faiths and none," she says. "But we are deeply rooted in the local churches and many of our volunteers and staff are motivated in the work that they do by their Christian faith,” she says. 
Faith has a "very special role to play" in the trust's work, Revie adds. 
 “Our values of community, compassion, dignity and justice are deeply rooted in the Christian faith," she says. 

“We don’t believe there should be food banks in today’s society,” Jacobs says. “That’s why we do all the extra work to make sure people aren’t dependent on the food bank.” 

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5 min read

After Southport: how to communicate amid tragedy, rumour, and riot

Handling the media in the aftermath brings dread, discretion and dignity

Stuart is communications director for the Diocese of Liverpool.

A media pack await a press conference in a street.
Media covering the Southport attacks.
The Emperor of Byzantium, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Working from home in the quiet town of Ormskirk, about four miles from Southport, the first I noticed was a cacophony of sirens accompanied by our local Facebook groups buzzing with speculation over what it was this time. The news started breaking. An incident in Southport, vague details at first but enough to start that feeling of unease.  

Then the phone call and email. The local vicar and one of our Archdeacons seeking advice as inevitably the media would be looking for comment. I’ve taken a similar call many times over the 20 years I have worked with the church. It sets a mix of contradictory emotions. Selfishly you can’t help thinking there goes my plans for the day before you are sharply brought up to the knowledge that the reason for this is a tragedy for others.  

Southport brought out a further emotion. When I was a student, I lived for a year close to the location of the stabbings. 30 years on and the suburban area I knew was seemingly unchanged. Yet everything was different. 

The role of the press officer at this point involves navigating a tricky balance. You have a job to do, the journalists you deal with have a job to do. You are constantly fielding phone calls, jotting messages juggling time slots. You have a relentless barrage of people putting interview requests in and you want to ensure the right voices are heard and that those who represent aren’t worn out by interview upon interview. 

Then you remember what caused the story in the first place. You think of the emergency services working hard to support those in need. Above all you think of the victims and the families – at that time not knowing how many or how serious. And the sense of gloom deepens as the rumours of how serious the situation spreads before you get word of a police conference fearing the worst before the worst gets confirmed. 

At these times the mood amongst the media teams always feels strange. Acutely aware of the pain of the situation and sympathetic to what’s happened they can’t escape the job they have to do. I have seen this over many years mainly through the management of the press pens outside funerals at Liverpool Cathedral and churches across the region. You get to know some of the pack well, mainly and somewhat grimly reuniting at the next tragedy. They are massively co-operative with a strong sense of camaraderie, yet you can feel the pressure coming down to them from their news and picture desks. So, a sharing of resources and support occurs underpinned by a hint of journalistic competition.  

The press officer’s role here is to feed the machine. It’s hungry. They have time to fill and very often, particularly so close to when the event happened, everyone is more speculative than informed. The machine needs feeding whatever and the church voice can be a calm voice of authority speaking the anxieties and wishes of the local community. However, we don’t want to be rent-a-voice, we are not helpful if we seem to be trying to grandstand over someone else’s grief. We need to show the compassion and love that our faith and Christian values teach us. 

That became critically important on the second night when things turned ugly and the story was hijacked by rioting right wing mobs. Having been to the peaceful and respectful vigil on the afternoon I drove back past the scene of the stabbings on my way home. You could smell the tension in the air as people were converging on the streets exuding a purpose that did not seem like the sorrow from earlier that day. 

The media aftermath for the church was then to support the efforts showing the community rebuilding whilst also calling for harmony, standing shoulder to shoulder with representatives from all faiths. 

And on to the funerals. 

There are many patterns to organising press coverage at a funeral. Usually, we need a pen to marshal the cameras in a way that enables them to get the pictures they need whilst maintaining a respectful, sympathetic distance. It feels there is a nigh on obligatory picture of the service order, my hand featuring in many of these shots. There is a lot of standing and waiting, clarifying the minutia of the service so the reporters can tell the story and capture the atmosphere.  

Yet for me each funeral is different as I try to ensure the family’s wishes predominate. Southport was a case in point. Of the two funerals in Anglican churches (one victim was from a Roman Catholic family) one family wanted no coverage and my role was simply to make sure that wish was honoured. The other saw cameras in and around church and a full suite of reporters so we work hard with them to ensure respect. Mostly that involves a combination of setting consistent fair rules and supplying enough for them to tell the story. Journalists can cope with told they can’t do something provided their rivals are getting the same message. Lose the consistency you lose the pack as I experience outside Ken Dodd’s funeral when I had to scream at the press pack to get back in their pen before the cortege arrived.  
I see this as a ministry. I have learnt techniques over the years, witnessed fights in graveyards, stood soaking waiting for the funeral to end and the coffin to leave so I can relax. Doing this is a privilege which spills over into the funerals I conduct as a priest. As do the learnings from those funerals that, in turn, inform my ministry. Get it right it becomes a fitting, respectful and dignified way for the wider community to say goodbye to a victim. 

Then when it’s done we move on. The press pack to the next day’s story myself to the tasks from the routine job that I had to ditch. That’s easier for us. But the families and loved ones can’t easily move on from their pain and grief. 

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