Tag: poverty

More than a food bank: Ray Woolford’s Deptford model

More than a food bank: Ray Woolford’s Deptford model
The People Before Profit shop: A food bank supporting other community initiatives
The People Before Profit shop: A food bank supporting other community initiatives

Today more evidence emerged about  the sheer numbers of people depending  on UK  food banks. But the most shocking fact is that the new figures published by the Trussell Trust – the biggest food bank charity – radically understate the true situation. The reality is that the charity only acounts for less than  half of the food banks in operation. So the figure of  more than 900,000 people given emergency food in the past year is actually much, much higher  than that.

But the evidence collected by the Trussell Trust exposed a 163 per cent hike in demand compared to 2012-13, and this rise has prompted a coalition of anti-poverty campaigners including the Trussell Trust  to claim that the UK  is breaching international law by violating the human right to food.

The Trussell Trust’s model involves individuals and organisations donating food that’s then redistributed free of charge to clients who’ve been given a foodbank voucher to use at a Trussell Trust food bank. The vouchers are issued by a jobcentre or a frontline care professional and those who get one can exchange it for three days’ emergency supply of non-perishable food. People can get a maximum of three consecutive vouchers. After that, the Trussell Trust says it signposts clients to organisations able to resolve underlying problems. But what really happens to improve the conditions of those who’ve had their three parcels of food? The food bank manager and the volunteers at the Trussell Trust food banks I know most about are highly committed and compassionate, but it seems to be getting harder to help those clients who repeatedly return. Take the case of Mark, who’s struggling with a shoulder injury, depression and debt. He’s been waiting months for his application for employment and support allowance (ESA) to come through, and has had to use the food bank many times. His life doesn’t seem to be getting better. Any prospect of significant improvement seems to rest solely within the power of the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP). Meanwhile, Mark continues to suffer.

The Trussell Trust is getting more involved in offering clients a degree of advocacy and support, but a few miles down the road in Deptford, South-East London, there’s a project that approaches soaring levels of food poverty in London in a different way – and actually offers advocacy for situations such as court hearings and aid to people in the form of loans.

The Lewisham and Greenwich People Before Profit shop charges £1 per individual or family for food. People must register, and there are 1,000 on their list. Client can choose 10 perishable and non-perishable items, including chicken or fish and vegetables (a number of potatoes would be one item). The shop also offers a second-hand clothes exchange, as well as selling some clothes and accessories and furniture. The staff there are paid a wage, and offer advocacy and support to the people who come here. For example, some of the people who visit get help when they have to attend industrial tribunals. On other occasions, staff have gone along to court hearings, and to meetings with social workers. This has included support for those who face having their children taken away because they can’t afford to feed them. Due to the withdrawal of legal aid, lawyers come in and give advice , as do benefits advice workers and a magistrate.

Lewisham and Greenwich People Before Profit campaigner Ray Woolford
Lewisham and Greenwich People Before Profit campaigner Ray Woolford

Lewisham and Greenwich People Before Profit campaigner Ray Woolford says:  ‘These people give their advice for free, because they have a social conscience. It all helps to build a network of support. The food for the shop is sourced ‘all over the place, including from Fareshare, and from Waitrose in Greenwich, which allows us to have surplus food four nights a week. There’s not that much wastage these days though – the middle classes are being careful and the supermarkets are cutting back on their orders. The proceeds from the shop are used to buy the food staples. To those who say that poor people are fat, it’s important to remember that a loaf of bread full of additives is 47p, while a swede costs £3. Cheap food makes us fat.’

Ray Woolford thinks his is the only model ‘with the shop aspects and the food bank in one location’, and he believes it could be copied elsewhere. In addition, ‘we actually pay a decent amount of money to our staff and we produce money to help us run our project’. He says the main problems that bring people to the shop are ‘benefit sanctions, low incomes and high rents’. As well as going towards wages, the funds raised also get used in the form of loans to help clients get back into work. It’s not given as money, but would for example go on an Oyster card to cover someone’s first few weeks of travel costs to get to a new job. The project recently paid for one food bank user to obtain a fitness instruction licence and get back into work. Often the shop will pay for a £5 top-up to an emergency power meter for an elderly or otherwise vulnerable person. ‘No interest is ever charged, and people do generally give it back. We don’t give money directly to people, but this approach reflects that some people have exceptionally adverse circumstances.’

The funds raised through the shop have also been used to pay for the initial £900 registration of a not-for-profit green energy co-op, that fits in with the People Before Profit agendas for both green energy and improving the local economy.

People Before Profit is building a profile for itself in this area, and plans to put forward candidates in the elections to Lewisham Council on 22 May. It will also field a Mayoral candidate, though its manifesto says that if elected, he would only accept the average wage for Lewisham of £30,000 and stand down after four years. The manifesto flags up that Lewisham is the 16th most deprived in England out of 326 (2010 figures), with a youth unemployment figure of 36%. The main manifesto policies include keeping money in the area, helping locally based businesses, paying a living wage to all council employees, ending all contracting-out of council services to the private sector and abolishing the position of Lewisham’s ‘all-powerful’ executive mayor.

The approach here seems to be one of empowering people in food poverty to tackle some of the underlying issues that have led them to the food bank. The atmosphere is anything but dismal. ‘It’s not a miserable place. It’s full of life and vitality. It’s inspirational in many ways. Most of the staff stay here all the time. They don’t want to go home!’ Ray Woolford adds: ‘It’s not just about feeding people. It’s about getting people out of poverty and empowering them in some way. We’re trying to end dependency, not create it.’ Could Ray’s place inspire new ways to put citizens in charge of their own futures?

Mark: State welfare is failing our citizens and food banks aren’t the answer

Mark: State welfare is failing our citizens and food banks aren’t the answer
Mark Bothwell. Still in pain and waiting for the outcome of his employment and support allowance application.
Mark Bothwell. Still in pain and waiting for the outcome of his employment and support allowance application.

A study presented earlier this week to the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Hunger and Food Poverty says the rise in food banks and charity food is a clear sign of the inadequate nature of social security provision and the way it is delivered. As reported in the Guardian, the report by Sheffield University researcher Hannah Lambie-Mumford warns of the danger of charity food becoming a fundamental part of, or even replacement for, formerly state-funded welfare.

As shown by Eoin Clarke here, by January this year the number of food banks in the UK had grown to more than 1,080. Give that number a bit more consideration. There are more food banks now in the UK than there are branches of Sainsbury’s. The experience of Mark Bothwell (pictured above), here at the London food bank, serves to illustrate the effect of our inadequate welfare system on real lives. Individuals with multiple, deep-set problems are being let down, and food banks can do nothing more for them than provide short-term food. Crisis packs of long life food are not, and can’t be, a solution for people who are being left month upon month with inadequate, delayed, or downright non-existent welfare payments.

Mark, who injured his right shoulder back in October, is on jobseeker’s allowance (JSA), but is still waiting to hear the outcome of his application for employment and support allowance (ESA). He tells me: ‘They say it will take a while’. He won’t be able to work for the foreseeable future, while he waits for his shoulder to heal. In the meantime, he’s trying to pay off some old debts ( a doorstep loan and a payment to Brighthouse) at the usual extortionate rates, in addition to the repayments on a crisis loan. That doesn’t leave any sensible amount of money left for food out of the current JSA rate of between £125 and £145 a fortnight (depending on whether the crisis loan repayment amount has been deducted).

He’s in a terrible way – in constant pain every day. His GP has put him back on the drug tramadol, and he says that some days ‘it literally feels like my flesh is on fire’. He’s struggling to keep his spirits up: ‘If I allowed myself to feel all the bad feelings I wouldn’t be able to function. There are people who are worse off.’ There are days when he goes without food, but he adds: ‘I heard a family in Afganistan talk on the news. The man had lost his younger son in a bombing, and the elder son was injured. A couple of days without food seems like nothing. My situation pales to nothing in comparison.’

Earlier in the year, Benefit Tales highlighted that the European Committee of Social Rights declared in a report that minimum levels of benefits – short-term and long-term incapacity benefit, state pension and jobseeker’s allowance – in Great Britain were ‘manifestly inadequate’.

The Coalition government should be deeply shamed by these comments from international observers. Maybe here at home we’ve got so used to the inequities that the burden on individuals and families isn’t registering any more. John Glen, parliamentary aide to Eric Pickles, said recently that partisan politics needs to be taken out of the food bank debate. He also said he hoped the all-party parliamentary inquiry would examine the underlying causes of the use of food banks. This is the same man who suggested in 2011 that everyone in work should have enough money for food.

Would he like food banks to quietly yet relentlessly continue transforming into an industrially-scaled charitably-funded rescuer of failing state provision? It’s easier to hand out food bank vouchers that you’re not paying for than to make sure your citizens get decent and humane levels of social security, paid on time.

While this shameful situation gets worse by the week it seems Mr Glen would prefer us not to get political about it.

‘We’re living in barbaric times.’ Charles’ story

Charles at the Jerico Road project in Catford
Charles at the Jerico Road project in Catford

Charles is a pensioner of 72 who must at times feel that he’s fallen off the edge of a world that he no longer recognises. He’s well spoken, very intelligent and has an air of dignity, despite the enormous challenges he faces in trying to exist from day to day. The world is chipping away at his soul and is bent on eroding his humanity, which despite all remains intact. I met him at the Jerico Road project, which feeds between 100 and 150 people in Catford, South London each Wednesday evening.

The project provides a safe space for the growing number of vulnerable people in this area within its thriving church (though you don’t have to be religious or Christian to benefit from what’s on offer). It gives advice on everything from homelessness, benefits, and getting back to work, as well as a nutritious three course meal. It’s about social solidarity, practical support and creating community. It’s a place where people are cherished.

Quite a few of those who come along are rough sleepers. Charles at least has a roof of sorts over his head. He has a small cottage, which I surmise he’s inherited. But he says he’s on a basic state pension, and the house is ‘falling to pieces – it’s a liability and it takes all my money to keep it going’. I wonder whether he’s receiving pension credit, which would boost his weekly benefit (about one in three people don’t realise they’re entitled to claim this), but he’s unclear on this (I’ll follow this up with staff at the project tomorrow). He may be struggling desperately, without the resources to lead a decent life , but he’s kind and generous enough to want to help some other men who are down on their luck. ‘Three men were sleeping on my floor. They were desperate people.’ What happened in his life? He volunteers that he was refused medication for what he describes as ’emotional illness’, and was then ‘dismissed’.

He is furious about the divisions and inequalities that he believes characterise life in London now. ‘I’m so angry I can’t even sleep. I’m angry about the vindictiveness the rich show towards the poor. We’re living in barbaric times.’

Some of the 100-150 people who come to the Jerico project for a free meal each week
Some of the 100-150 people who come to the Jerico project for a free meal each week

When asked if he’s eating properly, he says he tries. He says he’s been ‘struggling for justice since the age of four and I’ve had periods of utter persecution and disadvantage’. He adds: ‘I’m a Christian Socialist, but if you look at the nature of society, there are no safeguards, ethos, or morals. The mass media is our enemy and we can’t get a look in.’

What did last week’s budget have to offer Charles and the many other people trying to eke out an existence in this expensive city on a basic state pension? Well, pensioners will have the chance to blow their private pension pot on anything they want, including a Lamborghini if they so choose. A £15,000 flexible ISA savings vehicle is being set up. None of this is going to be any comfort to Charles.

What will happen to Charles as he gets further into old age? I don’t have the stomach to speculate too much tonight. What I do know is that his assessment of the government as a ‘mafiosi, lethal to democracy, imposing class warfare on the old, the vulnerable, the poor, and people with mental and physical illnesses’, is on the mark.