If you want to understand why people use food banks, and come up with policies that minimise them having to do so in the first place, listen to the people who know best: those who have experienced what it means to rely on charity food.
So say the authors of today’s research on food banks, who carried out 40 in-depth interviews with food bank users at seven locations across the UK. Their experiences and insights form the heart of the report, which also drew on extensive data relating to a further 1,000 food bank clients.
At the end of the interviews, clients were asked what message they had for “people in power”: what should policy-makers do to address the often painful injustices they had suffered? Answers varied: some could not say, others talked about childcare or housing reform; others joked, understandably perhaps, that:
Such a message would not be repeatable
The researchers summarised responses into five main lessons for policy makers:
1./ Listen to ordinary people
For God’s sake, listen to real people, real people out there with real lives not... I am sorry... not all these rich people... that have been born with money or have come into money... [listen to] people that are struggling every day to basically pay their bills, keep warm and eat.
It’s happening, it really is happening out there... where people are just... they can’t cope, they are scared to put the heating on, they are scared to, you know.
I mean, the real people that really are out there, trying to overcome illnesses and stuff, real things like depression and disability. It just winds me up really that I just feel like this government is just for the rich.
Wendy, young mother struggling to meet costs of training, North Cotswolds
2./ Gain real-life insight into poverty
I would like people in government to understand, from their little white towers that [homelessness and poverty] even with working people is far more widespread than they actually believe it is... It is getting worse. And then for them to do something about it... to have things in place where they are actually helping people, not isolating people. That’s what they should be doing.
Mary, mother with young baby, partner unemployed for last 6 months.
3./ Improve operation of the current benefit system
Get your bloody fingers out and give me some money... I know they have their jobs to do, I know there is other people apart from me, I know that they have got to get everything right, but it’s just... it’s taking so long, you know?
Becky, waiting for mandatory reconsideration of Employment Support Allowance, Durham
4./ Use the social security system to prevent poverty
I think... overall the money should be raised a bit. You cannot live off fifty odd pounds a week. I have been doing it since I was 18... [the level of JSA payment] does not help me, it does not help anybody...
Aileen, young unemployed woman, Scotland
5./ Take account of how policies work in the real world
I mean it looks nice on paper... how it physically touches people’s lives, they don’t understand, they don’t even get into communities to talk to somebody... statistically speaking it’s perfect, but not physically and emotionally... what they are doing to people.
Alex, single male, Durham
Source: Emergency Use Only: Understanding and reducing the use of food banks in the UK by Jane Perry, Martin Williams, Tom Sefton and Moussa Haddad. Published by The Trussell Trust, The Church of England, Oxfam GB and Child Poverty Action Group