ThesisPDF Available

The institutionalisation of emergency food provision: a danger to the social safety-net?

June 2014

DOI:10.13140/RG.2.2.26410.22720

Thesis for: BA Hons Social Policy
Advisor: Angharad Beckett

Authors:

University of Leeds

This research aims to contribute to an understanding of contemporary policy issues by utilising a social justice oriented approach and drawing on the lessons and experiences of countries where the redistribution of donated and surplus food forms are institutionalised forms of charitable help. I argue that to achieve a strong public commitment to eradicating hunger, a radical re-politicisation is required which may be achieved through adopting a clearer food poverty measure as well as utilising the emergency food space as a platform for collective self-help and political agency.

Content uploaded by Richard Bridge

Content may be subject to copyright.

SID NO. 200617280

SLSP3051 Social Policy Dissertation

The institutionalisation of emergency food provision:

a danger to the social safety-net?

BA (Hons) Social Policy

ABSTRACT

Whilst emergency food provision has a long-standing international history, it has only

recently acquired policy salience within the UK. This research aims to contribute to an

understanding of the contemporary policy issues by utilising a social justice oriented

approach and drawing on the lessons and experiences of countries where the

redistribution of donated and surplus food forms are institutionalised forms of

charitable help. Employing empirical qualitative research conducted in two cities in the

North of England, it compares the experience of recipients of different emergency food

models and local authority welfare assistance schemes. Findings suggest that whilst the

conditionality and efficacy of the benefit system are catalysts in triggering emergency

food referrals, the susceptibility to crisis is due to the inadequacy of low incomes,

particularly for young people. The overt linkages observed between the local state and

food banks, together with the decision to cut local welfare assistance funding in 2015,

suggest a neoliberal drift of state retrenchment in which emergency food providers

form a secondary and spatially uneven social safety net. It is argued that whilst shame

was internalised by emergency food users, the food bank is simultaneously experienced

as a symbolic space in which shame is projected through interpersonal interactions of a

punitive state but paradoxically also as a welcoming and trusting sanctuary. In

concluding, I argue that to achieve a strong public commitment to eradicating hunger, a

radical re-politicisation is required which may be achieved through adopting a clearer

food poverty measure as well as utilising the emergency food space as a platform for

collective self-help and political agency.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ABSTRACT ........................................................................................................................ 3

TABLE OF CONTENTS ........................................................................................................ 5

INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................................ 7

CHAPTER 1 LITERATURE REVIEW .................................................................................. 11

The contemporary context of emergency food provision in the UK .......................................... 11

Food – an issue of social justice? ............................................................................................. 14

Food banks: lessons from abroad? .......................................................................................... 19

Upstream or downstream? ..................................................................................................... 22

Critical issues in UK emergency food provision ........................................................................ 24

Primary catalysts ........................................................................................................................... 24

Unintended consequences ........................................................................................................... 25

Sustainability of a charitable response ......................................................................................... 26

Local welfare assistance ................................................................................................................ 27

CHAPTER 2 METHODOLOGY AND RESEARCH DESIGN ..................................................... 29

The sample ............................................................................................................................ 30

Ethical considerations ............................................................................................................ 31

Data-gathering and materials used ......................................................................................... 32

Limitations ............................................................................................................................. 34

CHAPTER 3 FINDINGS AND ANALYSIS ............................................................................ 35

Primary catalysts ........................................................................................................................... 35

Unintended consequences ........................................................................................................... 38

The sustainability of the emergency food model ......................................................................... 42

Linkage between the state and emergency food providers ......................................................... 45

CHAPTER 4 DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION ................................................................... 49

BIBLIOGRAPHY ............................................................................................................... 57

APPENDIX A Ethics approval and correspondence ........................................................... 72

APPENDIX B – Participant Information Sheet .................................................................. 94

APPENDIX C – Consent form ........................................................................................... 96

APPENDIX D – Summary user table ................................................................................. 98

APPENDIX E – Sample shopping list and Voucher ............................................................ 99

APPENDIX F – Sample interview .................................................................................... 100

APPENDIX G - Dissemination......................................................................................... 111

INTRODUCTION

In recent months, food banks have been at the forefront of a wider debate on welfare

reform. On one hand, David Cameron (2014) suggests welfare reform is part of a ‘social

and moral mission’, which is about giving ‘new hope’ to those in receipt of it. On the

other hand, Cardinal Nichols argued ‘the basic safety net ... has been torn apart’ as well

as critiquing welfare reform as ‘too punitive’ with resulting destitution a ‘disgrace’ for a

‘country of our affluence’ (Bingham 2014).

Food banks now form part of the fabric of UK society. The drives for food bank

donations extend from supermarkets to protest marches to even Premiership football

matches (Betterway Demo 2014, Everton Football Club 2014). Their proliferation is

evident in the media (Johnston 2013, BBC News 2013). Debates though rarely go

beyond unsophisticated explanations or political point-scoring. Whilst the phenomenon

of food banks is relatively new in the UK, their existence in North America suggests a

dangerous precedent in their potential institutionalisation as an integral part of social

welfare (Riches 2002, Poppendieck 1998).

Research on food banking in the UK is relatively sparse, particularly from a user

perspective. This small-scale qualitative research project will interrogate the concept of

emergency food providers and more particularly assess whether the institutionalisation

of emergency and charitable food provision by a shadow state provides the means for

further state retrenchment.

The research compares the experience of participants in this field in two separate local

authorities in the North of England. A Trussell Trust foodbank in a small service-

dominated city (called Rownbrough) provides a comparison against a Fareshare model

in a housing-related support service for young adults in a deprived ward in a much

larger city (called Ellingham).

Research questions are focussed on determining the primary catalysts for emergency

food demand as well as interrogating the unintended consequences to more

mainstreamed food bank use. From the findings, the research questions the

sustainability of emergency food banks as a model to relieve hunger and further

inquires if its institutionalisation provides a depoliticised backdrop in which the state

can pare back welfare from a rights-based model to one determined by discretionary

benevolence.

The research is approached from a human rights and social justice perspective based on

the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) and

specifically General Comments 12 and 14 which state respectively ‘the human right to

food is of crucial importance for the enjoyment of all rights’ and to ‘ensure equal access

for all to the underlying determinants of health, such as nutritiously safe food’ (CESCR

1999, CESCR 2000).

Whilst food poverty has historically been considered a ‘Cinderella subject within public

policy’ (Lang 1999: 1), the current media spotlight provides an opportunity to highlight

the issue as one of public interest, especially due to the dichotomy between the

apparent generosity of donors and the perjorative attitudes towards benefit claimants

(Park et al 2012).

Whilst the research is driven by Janet Poppendieck’s theory that emergency food

provision facilitates state withdrawal from social welfare by masking the impact of its

retrenchment, the framework is primarily abductive. Data arises that falls outside of the

original theoretical framework, which may be due to different cultural and social

contexts in the UK influencing models and users (Meyer and Lunnay 2013).

The first chapter provides a review of the contemporary context of food banking in the

UK before addressing the theoretical question of whether food is an issue for social

justice and moreover human rights. By exploring the international context, and a brief

case study of the Canadian experience, the institutionalisation of food banking can be

regarded as part of a neoliberal drift towards state retrenchment. The chapter finishes

by drawing attention to the recent localisation of emergency welfare assistance, a

different means of acquiring food in crisis, and how that links with food banks.

The next chapter focuses on the rationale behind the use of semi-structured

interviewing in order to obtain a richness of meaningful and detailed data. Brief

discussions on both the ethical implications and sampling technique are included before

reflecting on some of the methodological limitations of the project.

The third chapter presents the key findings and analysis of the data in the context of

both the theoretical framework that underpins the research but also uses a dialectical

process that interacts between the subjective and reflexive expression of experience by

interviewees as well as broader concepts and theories within the literature.

In the last chapter, the discussion analyses the points of similarity and difference from

the literature as well as providing a critical review of how the data has answered the

research questions. The conclusion contained within this chapter is necessarily

tentative due to the small-scale qualitative nature of the research but demonstrates the

need for further and more detailed research around this issue.

CHAPTER 1 LITERATURE REVIEW

The contemporary context of emergency food provision in the UK

Whilst the historical global context suggests hunger has been depoliticised through

emergency food provision (Riches 1997, Tarasuk 2001), the emergence of mainstream

food banking in the UK is politically sensitive. Politicians on the left argue that it reflects

the failure of Coalition welfare reform and is inherently unjust whilst proponents of

Coalition welfare reform variously argue it reflects the Big Society in action, that

increased demand (of a ‘free’ good) follows increased supply or more controversially,

places the responsibility with poor individual life choices (Butler 2013a, Morse 2013).

These latter arguments form the basis of the political right’s viewpoint that there is no

research demonstrating a linkage between welfare reform and food bank usage (Butler

2014a), although the Scottish Government (2013) commissioned a study with the aims

of assessing the extent and potential causes of emergency food demand. The report

found a strong consensus of providers stating ‘welfare reform, benefit sanctions and

falling incomes have been the main factors driving the recent trend [of food bank

expansion]’ (Scottish Government 2013: 3). Arguably the ‘cost of living’ was omitted as

the IFS (2014) recently reported energy costs increasing by 60%, food costs by 30%,

and water costs by 30% for the period 2007-2013. The fact these items make up a

significantly higher proportion of expenditure for low income groups only amplifies the

effect on those households (Judge 2014).

Whilst this review interrogates the veracity of differing and perhaps more complex

explanations, the expansion of emergency food provision in the UK is striking. Trussell

Trust (2014), for instance, state the numbers of people they provided with emergency

food increased from 347,000 in 2012-13 to 913,000 people in 2013-14. This near

tripling of demand should however be seen in the light of a 45% increase in Trussell

Trust foodbanks opened (Trussell Trust 2014).

Models of emergency food provision vary. The predominant Trussell Trust model

(franchised to local churches and community groups) works on recipients being

referred by partner agencies for a three-day food parcel up to a maximum of three times

in a six-month period (Lambie-Mumford 2013) whilst FareShare aim to address both

food waste and food poverty by redistributing food surplus to charities who then

distribute to their client group (Nat Cen Social Research 2014). FareShare also reported

a 25% annual increase in the number of charities provided with surplus food (Williams

2013). Whilst these are the two dominant models, other models exist such as the non-

denominational Real Aid in Hull who provide food without the need for vouchers but for

a small £1.50 fee which they argue mitigates the stigma of charity (Rayner 2013). In

addition, there are a plethora of small-scale below-the-radar emergency providers. For

instance, in Ellingham there are 18 different providers whilst Rownbrough has 3. They

range from a church providing food parcels for destitute asylum seekers to a weekly

meal for street homeless people.

The expansion of the UK emergency food industry now encapsulates multinational

corporations and international NGOs as integral elements. Nearly all models are reliant

to some extent on collaboration with large supermarket chains. Trussell Trust (2013),

in their franchise offer, state ‘foodbanks are able to hold supermarket collections in

local Tesco stores and receive a “top-up” of 30% on what is donated’. Tesco recently

announced they would divert all surplus food from its distribution centres and online

grocery centres to FareShare (2013). Whilst it is beyond the scope of this research to

consider whether the corporate social responsibility of multinationals is adequately

served by distributing surplus food, the future reliability of supply and financial help by

multinationals (whose raison d’etre is profit) is certainly relevant in considering

whether charitable food provision is an appropriate mechanism for addressing poverty.

Growing institutionalisation and corporatisation of emergency food is evidenced by

NGOs, such as British Red Cross and Oxfam, forming partnerships with FareShare and

Trussell Trust respectively to aid in distribution but also to provide advice, training and

campaigning activity (Butler 2013b). Notwithstanding these developing relationships,

Australia provides a sombre warning of the vagaries and adequacy of ongoing corporate

funding and donations as 65,000 people were turned away by food relief charities each

month (Foodbank Australia 2013).

Evaluating the primary catalysts for food bank usage is not clear-cut. Whilst a report

commissioned by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs rebutted

government claims that increased supply of emergency food outlets explains increased

usage (Lambie-Mumford et al 2014), the ten month delay in its release for ‘a quality

assurance process’ meant the data (taken in March 2013) was out of date. The lack of

substantive independent research into emergency food provision in the UK is therefore

unhelpful in extrapolating definitive reasons for increased usage. More optimistically, a

new All Party Parliamentary Group was set up at the end of 2013 to specifically

investigate the ‘root causes of hunger and food poverty’ and the increase in British food

bank usage (House of Commons Library 2013: 1).

Food – an issue of social justice?

Whilst emergency food provision currently has a prominent policy profile, government

responses have historically approached food issues from a neoliberal perspective in

privileging ‘informed choice’ rather than a right to food (Dowler and O’Connor 2012:

44). This appears to breach international human rights obligations, most specifically the

International Covenant of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), a multilateral

treaty ratified by 161 countries that looks to progressively realise social rights including

rights to work, social security, health, education and an adequate standard of living

(United Nations 2014).

Whilst Lister (2010) illustrates how the distinction between needs and preferences

have been shaped by capitalism, culture and context, there is nevertheless a degree of

consensus through time that food is a basic and absolute need (Rowntree 1901, Maslow

1943, Marcuse 1964). Moreover, the right to health is clearly dependent on the right to

a sufficient quantity of nutritious food. In a recent letter to the British Medical Journal,

Taylor-Robinson et al (2013: 347) draw attention to recent increases in malnutrition

cases and warn UK food poverty has ‘all the signs of a public health emergency that

could go unrecognised until it is too late to take preventative action’. This letter was

reinforced by a letter from twenty seven bishops who reported 5,500 people have been

admitted to hospital since Easter 2013 for malnutrition (Perry 2014). Dean’s (2010: 9)

concept of ‘thin’ and ‘thick’ needs allows a comparison of essential goods to survive (for

instance food, shelter, health) with the thicker needs (for instance, transport and IT)

that one requires to participate fully in society. Whilst crises may be short-term, the

thinness of a person’s need is so severe that at the point of referral they experience

deprivation of their basic needs. This thinness of needs can be aligned with absolute

poverty whilst thicker needs can be compared to relative poverty or even Joseph

Rowntree Foundation’s (2014) minimum income standard which relates to the

exclusionary consequences of not being able to participate in society.

If, as argued, food is a basic need and therefore a right underpinned by international

law, the question arises as to how a right to food is delivered and the consequences of

failure to meet that need. King (1989: 33) refers to the ‘tripartite nexus’ in which

welfare is delivered by a combination of the state, market and charitable sectors with

each having differing motives. Arguably, and potentially pertinent to the question of

emergency food, characteristics of familialism and clientelism that provide the

framework of the Southern Mediterranean welfare model enable the family and

religious institutions to also be seen as potential deliverers (Ferrara 1996, Castles and

Obinger 2008). The fact so much emergency food is delivered by religious institutions in

the UK (eg the Trussell Trust, the Salvation Army and most small scale organisations) is

relevant as users may make different judgments as to whether they are prepared to

receive emergency food from faith-based charitable organisations.

Historically, it is not disputed that provision of welfare in the UK has moved from

delivery by the state to a mixed delivery in which the market and voluntary and

charitable sector (VCS) play far greater roles (Lister 2010). As Buckingham (2012: 587)

suggests, the capacity of VCS organisations to ‘meet social needs depend to a great

extent on the resources and support made available to them’. For instance, using

Buckingham’s typology, ‘compliant contractors’ who are heavily dependent on state

funding with little or no voluntary input may struggle to resist the hegemony of

neoliberal ideology (Buckingham 2012: 579). Even smaller faith-based ‘cautious

contractors’, who retain a greater voluntary input, may experience similar tensions in

retaining their values whilst complying with the conditions of government contracts

(Buckingham 2012: 584). Furthermore, welfare pluralism does not necessarily provide

sufficiently to meet the diverse needs of postmodern society, particularly in relation to

issues of gender, disability, race and class (Williams 1992). This neoliberal shift in the

VCS not only marketises basic needs but also dilutes, and in some cases destroys, the

ethos and values of welfare charities.

This brings into light how needs – and specifically food - should be met in emergency

situations. Since the 1930s, there has been discretionary assistance for exceptional or

special expenses, latterly known as the Social Fund. The dilution of that discretionary

assistance by divesting its responsibility to local authorities (in 2013) is likely to

intensify the intensity of poverty experienced by people in emergency need (Grover

2012, Drakeford and Davidson 2013). The announcement that there will be no funding

for such local schemes from April 2015 (unless local authorities self-fund) suggests the

central state has divested any responsibility to a ‘right to food’ (Butler 2014b). This

research specifically engages with how the two local authorities engage with local crises

and emergency food provision.

The contrast of national law with the ICESCR (ratified by the UK in 1976) is marked.

Despite the recommendation of the Joint Committee on Human Rights of the House of

Lords and the House of Commons to incorporate the ICESCR into domestic law, the UK

refused to do so, arguing they are merely ‘aspirational policy objectives’ (Killeen 2008:

6). Presumably for similar reasons, the UK has not signed the Optional Protocol to the

ICESCR which would allow the UN Committee to consider individual complaints (United

Nations 2014). So whilst the current ‘right to food’ is unambiguously set out within the

ICESCR, Onora O’Neill (2002) neatly summarises the dichotomy between rights and

obligations : ‘It can be a mockery to tell someone they have the right to food when there

is nobody with the duty to provide them with food’.

Although the justiciability of the right to food is clearly absent in the UK, a rights-based

approach appears to be the most appropriate way to critique how needs are met

(Dobson et al 2001, Lambie-Mumford 2013). The alternative is a reliance on

beneficence which not only ignores power relations in making discretionary decisions

but moreover can never be a solution to resolving hunger as it fails to address the

political legitimacy of a system in which such want could be easily satisfied (Nagel

1977). As a rebuttal to this point, others will argue that given freedom, people will make

better choices than the state and as such, people will be enlightened enough to help one

another through what Burke (1910: 27) refers as the ‘little platoons’ in society we

purportedly belong to. Harris and Seldon (1987) similarly argued welfare is run better

by charities and indeed, today’s ‘Big Society’ relies on a similar concept (Blond 2012).

These arguments ignore that society may not always be warm and other-oriented and

instead may make rights highly conditional on compliance with a moral prescriptivism

defined by either politicians or benefactors (Driver and Martell 1997, Wright 2003). The

findings of the Scottish Government (2013) linking food bank use to benefit sanctions

suggests welfare conditionality plays a significant role in food bank use. If so, the

doubling of benefit sanctions under the Coalition (Wintour 2014) presents a deliberate

policy shift towards a more residualised and conditional form of social security in which

the state relies on faith groups and charities to provide a secondary safety net.

Whilst the Trussell Trust may argue part of their remit is to advocate for policy change,

Poppendieck (1998) suggests such a position is undermined by vested interests as their

continued existence is reliant on preserving the status quo. Further as the franchise

model means that the network of Trussell Trust foodbanks is arbitrarily located, some

areas have little or no provision. Research suggests voluntarism and fundraising are

perversely linked to the local prosperity of an area rather than its need (Mohan and

Gorsky 2001) although Fyfe and Milligan (2003) argue the theory may be overplayed

and targeting of area-based funding is perhaps more important. As the effect of

Coalition welfare reform has been disproportionately felt in more deprived locales (see

Beatty and Fothergill 2013), the spatial unevenness of emergency food providers means

supply may not match demand. The absence of food is a social marker and restricts self-

determination (Dobson et al 2001) and therefore the unevenness of provision

potentially compounds the loss of dignity experienced by those most affected.

The need for emergency food provision suggests a fundamental breach of the social

rights that are part of TH Marshall’s three legged stool of citizenship in which he

suggests one should have the right to a ‘modicum of economic welfare and security’

(Marshall 1992: 8). The concurrent residualisation and increased conditionality also

signifies an ideological shift in focussing on the perceived deficits of the individual

(Dwyer 2004, Standing 2011). This shift has not only been followed by a coarsening of

language by politicians (Unwin 2013) but also a mainstreaming within the media of

negative depictions of poverty (for instance, Benefits Street and Skint), creating a ‘social

distancing’ as reflected in the current pervasive ‘skivers and strivers’ rhetoric. For

instance, The Glasgow Media Group’s content analysis of media coverage of disabled

people provides compelling evidence of a significant increase in the use of pejorative

language and negative depictions of disabled people in receipt of benefits (Briant et al

2011). Hodgetts et al (2013: 5) suggest such characterisations occur in ‘symbolic spaces’

that allow for the distancing between ‘hierarchically dispersed groups’. If so, one such

space may be the ‘food bank’. Killeen (2008: 4) warns how such pejorative attitudes can

quickly become embedded in class and social relations through what he calls

‘povertyism’. This is often justified by a perceived ‘superiority’ of morals and values

through the institutionalisation of discriminatory services at a macro level (Wright

2003).

Food banks: lessons from abroad?

‘In countries where [food banks] are in their infancy, the question of whether to support

their development should be a matter of urgent public debate’ (Riches 2002: 648).

Accordingly, it is useful to consider some of the emergent patterns in countries with

more developed emergency food networks.

Emergency food has been an integral part of society in other OECD countries for over 20

years (Thiérault and Yadlowski 2000). The first recorded food bank in the US was in

Phoenix in 1967 whilst in Canada, Edmonton opened in 1981 (Riches 2002). Feeding

America, the national network, is now estimated to feed 25 million people annually

whilst usage in Canada increased by 90% between 1989 and 2001 with over 700,000

people using food banks in the month of March 2001 (Wilson and Tsoa 2001). Whilst

Australia and New Zealand were early adopters in the 1980s, food banks are now found

in East Asia, Central and South America (Riches 2011).

Using Canada as a case study, food banks were set up to provide emergency relief but

‘20 years later they have become an integral part of contemporary society’ (Theriault

and Yadlowski 2000: 206). Riches (2002) argues this can be attributed to an

interlinking web of institutionalisation, corporatisation and depoliticisation. He

provides examples of how corporates such as Heinz, Kraft, Kelloggs and the Canadian

Broadcasting Corporation form an integral part of emergency food provision by not only

being a major supplier and donor of surplus food but also simultaneously sponsoring

annual food drives (Riches 2002). Whilst this serves to highlight their corporate social

responsibility, it is problematic in not only legitimising the notion of hunger as a matter

for charity but curtails political debate on the right to food (Riches 1997). This

obscuring of subtle changes in social structures – in this case, the discretionary nature

of welfare provision – can be considered ‘structural violence’, a form of abuse with no

specific perpetrator (Galtung 1969: 171). Politicians are able to exert control at arm’s

length, the result being the most deprived in society are forced to surrender their

sovereignty to the arbitrary rules of external organisations. It is not suggested

emergency food providers deliberately form part of this process or that volunteers

should be characterised as the ‘willing handmaidens of neoliberalism’ (Wakefield et al

2013: 444); conversely, many advocate for a fairer distribution. The point is once food

banks become institutionalised into society, they have formed a secondary, albeit

imperfect, safety-net that the neoliberal state is reluctant to replace with something

more substantial.

The retrenchment of state provision – in countries such as Canada, the US, Australia and

now the UK - should be regarded as a key plank in a neoliberal evolution towards a

‘shadow state’ in which publicly provided services are replaced by private or not-for-

profit initiatives (Peck and Tickell 2002). Rather than viewing this as an inevitable and

disempowering shift, the emergence of new horizontal and fluid movements –

exemplified by social media, technology and creativity – provides grounds that

[i]ncorporation into the discursive framework of neoliberalism ... might instead be

more usefully understood as a process that calls upon activists and intellectuals to

rethink the parameters of political agency (Laurie and Bondi 2005: 398).

For example, a large organization called The Stop in Toronto has flourished with

gardens, kitchens, greenhouses and farmers’ markets and transformed itself from the

notion of a traditional ‘food bank’ to what Naomi Klein describes as ‘one of the most

visionary movements for justice and equality’ (CFC Canada 2012). It demonstrates the

importance of community participation and provides opportunities for members to

forge their own responses to hunger by fostering self-reliance and independence.

Upstream or downstream?

The key premise of Poppendieck’s ‘Sweet Charity’ book is that emergency food

provision looks downstream at the symptoms of poverty and hunger, rather than

upstream at the causes (Poppendieck 1998). In her analogy of a baby floating down a

river, she presents a compelling argument that downstream this creates a baby-saving

industry which creates jobs and simultaneously serves what she calls the ‘Wenceslas

syndrome’ in which volunteering serves the needs of the volunteer as much or more

than the service-user (Poppendieck 1998: 19). To that end, Poppendieck (1998)

illustrates the attraction of volunteering in a food bank – the investment of a low cost in

terms of time and commitment is repaid with emotional and religious reward. As one

volunteer said, ‘It’s almost like a high’ whilst another remarked ‘I feel so good leaving

here, knowing I’ve helped someone’ (Poppendieck 1998: 18). The extension of the

syndrome to society itself makes this concept especially persuasive. Donating some

pasta at a supermarket drive provides a more immediate reward than paying additional

tax from your income. Multinational corporations can enhance their public profiles

whilst meeting the requirements of their corporate social responsibility without deeper

scrutiny. Civic society obtains greater tangible rewards than through redistribution of

income. All this distracts and diverts from finding fundamental solutions to the

structural problems of deepening poverty.

By ignoring what goes on upstream, this decontextualises the prevalent issues which

lead to hunger, and moreover accepts their structural origins as a given. Whilst food

banks do see their role as both emergency relief (rather than providing permanent

solutions) as well as advocating for change (Trussell Trust 2013), the normative effects

of institutionalising emergency food as part of our social structure risks the substitution

of publicly provided welfare by the VCS (Peck and Tickell 2002). Penner (2004) argues

the baby-saving analogy creates a false dichotomy by proposing that one can save the

babies and go upstream in addressing underlying issues, and further suggests that the

acuteness of short-term need is sometimes so severe that it should be prioritised.

Arguably, if the likelihood of success in changing the underlying cause (in this case a

right to food) is remote, attention may be best focussed on achievable goals. All those

arguments have merit but the lessons from abroad suggest food banks are unlikely to be

temporary blights on our social landscape but more likely to become highly

institutionalised (Riches 2011).

Before moving on, it is striking to note the similarities between the current UK

economic context and that of the US described by Poppendieck (1998: 5) during her

research:

the cutbacks and reductions in public assistance benefits, along with declining

wages at the bottom of the pay scale, increasing shelter costs … are reducing people

to destitution

Critical issues in UK emergency food provision

Primary catalysts

Whilst acknowledged as politically contested, investigating reasons for emergency food

provision can be broken down into three areas. Firstly, the adequacy and efficacy of

social security can be interrogated. Secondly, economic conditions (for instance,

increasing living costs and the declining value of wages and social security) play a part.

Thirdly, the resurgence of charity through the creation of a ‘shadow state’ may

normalise philanthropy as an appropriate response to hunger.

The limited research in the UK suggests the primary catalysts for referrals to food banks

are benefit sanctions imposed for purportedly failing to adhere to jobseeking conditions

and delays in processing new claims (including switching between benefits) (Scottish

Government 2013, Lambie-Mumford 2014, Cooper and Dumpleton 2013). The data

from local authorities and Trussell Trust (2014) reports a broadly similar national

picture.

Whilst often overlooked, the increasing cost of food and fuel in particular, associated

with stagnant or falling wages, has certainly impacted on living standards and whilst

not necessarily the trigger for a referral, brings many more people into a potential

‘catchment’ who are only a crisis away from requiring emergency assistance. By using

the JRF Minimum Income Standard, a measure of what the public believe is an adequate

income upon which to maintain a socially acceptable quality of life, Padley and Hirsch

(2014) illustrate the impact on living standards. Numbers living below that threshold

rose by 900,000 (an increase of 20%) between 2008/9 and 2011/2. As the Institute of

Fiscal Studies (2014) predicts real income is unlikely to recover to 2009/10 levels until

2018/9, and that poorer households are disproportionately affected, it appears the

increased propensity of low income people to encounter crisis is likely to intensify.

Unintended consequences

Without a critical lens, charity is often conceived as an unproblematic good but I argue

that disguises the power relations inherent in its deployment. As Eduardo Galeano

(2003) said: ‘Charity is vertical, so it’s humiliating. It goes from top to bottom’. Whilst

that view precludes the positive impacts of charity, research conducted by Wakefield et

al (2013) found that the classed and faith-based nature of food banks was problematic

in stigmatising and ‘othering’ recipients. This is mirrored by Lambie-Mumford’s (2013:

83) findings in which some recipients and distributors regarded the process akin to

‘begging’ as well as being ‘humiliating’ and ‘degrading’. Whilst the research found this

was not necessarily a uniform experience, she also acknowledges the Christian focus of

Trussell Trust poses significant challenges (Lambie 2011).

Sustainability of a charitable response

Whilst McGlone et al (1999) illustrate how community food projects can have positive

outcomes in improving social capital and addressing social isolation, they also

acknowledge the difficulties of embedding a sustainable model due to funding

uncertainties which arguably has been exacerbated by the increased influence that the

state wields on the VCS through discourse and discipline. Such disciplinary measures

now include the so-called ‘gagging law’ which curtails the ability of Trussell Trust and

others to campaign (Toynbee 2013). Furthermore, Dowler and O’Connor (2012) caution

that some projects follow a neoliberal perspective in focussing on ‘individual deficit’

rather than structural change, an argument supported by Michael Gove’s recent

intervention that food bank use is as a result of ‘decisions by families’ that are ‘unable to

manage their finances’ (Berger 2013). Available academic evidence does not support

this assertion: indeed, the skill and resourcefulness of coping strategies by low income

households has been consistently highlighted over time (Lang 1997, Campbell and

Desjardins 1989, Travers 1996).

Some community food responses do provide other tangible benefits other than

alleviating hunger (Saul and Curtis 2013, Metcalf et al 2012) but once again, the

common critique is the ‘inability to overcome or alter the poverty that underpins this

problem [of food insecurity]’ (Tarasuk 2001: 487).

Whilst food banks currently appear to garner public sympathy, a further question arises

as to whether food banks may be susceptible to compassion fatigue, which may be

intensified if the pathological representation of benefit recipients continues. If

corporate and indeed donor interest wavers – or the 20 million tonnes of annual food

waste is better managed (Stuart 2009) - there is a real risk that the unstable and

haphazard nature of emergency food models proves lacking in capacity to respond to

deep-rooted food inequality.

Local welfare assistance

The devolvement of crisis assistance to local authorities in 2013 intensifies the pressure

on emergency food providers. Research from The Children’s Society suggests funding

cuts of £150m, much tighter qualifying criteria and replacement of loans with in-kind

support create new barriers to those who need support (Royston and Rodrigues 2013).

The narrow criteria, allied to poor publicising of the schemes, means that there are high

levels of underspend (Reed 2013). For example by the end of January 2014, half of local

authorities had spent less than 40% of their funds (Butler et al 2014).

Each local scheme is different: whilst some schemes refer or fund food banks, others do

not. Conversely, some emergency food providers accept referrals from local schemes

(and indeed jobcentres) whilst others refuse to link up (Lambie-Mumford 2014). This

demonstrates how parts of the state are devolving responsibility to emergency food

providers, something Lord Freud (Minister for Welfare Reform) encourages: ‘local

authorities ... may very well look at ramping up their support in kind.’ (Butler 2013a).

Indeed, there is a paradox in Freud’s comments that ‘Food from a food bank – the

supply – is a free good, and by definition there is almost infinite demand for a free good’

(Hansard (Lords) 2013). Whilst the voucher referral system demonstrates the flawed

nature of that argument, the availability to the state of food bank vouchers is quite

literally a ‘free good’ that allows it to substitute its own resources with those of charity.

So whilst the supply is free to the state, it is not unrestricted to the user.

CHAPTER 2 METHODOLOGY AND RESEARCH DESIGN

An evaluative research design has been adopted in which semi-structured qualitative

interviews are primarily used to address research questions to users, managers,

volunteers and local authority officers responsible for the design of their welfare

assistance schemes. Document analysis of those schemes was also used to further

consider the interaction between the local state, indigent individuals and emergency

food providers.

As the literature review demonstrates, explanations of the catalysts of emergency food

provision are highly contested. The interactions between the local state, its newly

formed welfare schemes, differing models of emergency food providers and a diversity

of demographic groups provide for an assortment of processes and practices that

impact on human experience, and is accentuated by a dominant political and media

discourse that ideologically blames the poor for their poverty (see Taylor-Gooby 2013).

By using an abductive research strategy, a ‘bottom-up’ approach is adopted which

presents the understandings and meanings attributed to the experience of recipient and

privileges an understanding of the social world from the perspective of the ‘insider’

(Blaikie 2010). The use of semi-structured questioning aims to acquire ‘knowledge’ that

is not only interpretivist in its subjective articulation of experience but looks to

encourage social actors to act reflexively in going beyond the taken-for-granted nature

of everyday life (Blaikie 2010). That process will therefore probe for what is ‘silent’ in

accounts whilst iteratively drawing on previous interviews. Once collated into thematic

categories, abductive reasoning will allow for a dialectical method of moving between

the data generated, experience and broader concepts and theories (Coffey and Atkinson

1996).

The sample

As the aim of the research is to obtain a depth of insight, the sample size is not as crucial

as if a quantitative method had been adopted. A purposive sampling strategy is adopted

that looks to reflect relevant perspectives (Arksey and Knight 1999).

Participants were recruited through the two organisations partly due to the constraints

of time but also in the case of the housing support agency due to their position as a

comprehensive gatekeeper, reflecting their long-standing and trusting relationship with

service users (Greenhalgh 2012).

The aim is to achieve an ‘information richness’ (Patton 2002: 245) which not only

reveals the interactions and social processes that relate to emergency food provision

but also achieve more meaningful and detailed insights. For this reason the validity that

can be generated from qualitative interviews relates to its depth rather than any

generalisability that may be claimed from a larger sample. Interviews were conducted

with fourteen users, two managers, a volunteer, an administrator, four local authority

officers as well as the Head of UK Public Affairs of an international Christian charity. In

Rownbrough, interviews were conducted in three outreach venues on different days of

the week to widen the range of prospective perspectives.

Ethical considerations

The research was structured to mitigate the risks associated with the stress and

possible loss of self-esteem of service users in articulating the potentially distressing

experience of acute hunger as well as the referral process and receipt of emergency

food.

The recruitment of participants and the interview itself required careful consideration.

The nature of the project was explained to interviewees at the outset; its aims, the

extent of involvement (including time commitment), the risks associated (such as

potential distress and embarrassment), the anonymisation and confidentiality of

interviews, freedom to withdraw from the research as well as an explanation of how the

data will be used and kept (Arksey and Knight 1999). A participant information sheet

(Appendix B) was provided to all participants and a consent form signed (Appendix C).

This process complies with the Statement of Ethical Practice of the BSA as well as the

University of Leeds’ own guidance (BSA 2002, University of Leeds 2013). Acquiring

ethical approval (see Appendix A) provided the opportunity to reflect on whether

participants with mild learning difficulties should be included and if so, how to acquire

informed consent. I concluded that failing to include such participants would be

exclusionary and took the view that being accompanied by a ‘responsible other’ or

‘proxy’ would safeguard their interests (British Educational Research Association

2011). This does not detract from the importance of careful and sensitive monitoring of

vulnerability throughout an interview for all participants.

Whilst participants understood the research would be disseminated to policymakers

and politicians (see Appendix G), it was stressed that all names and identifiers are

changed to afford anonymity.

Data-gathering and materials used

Semi-structured interviews were chosen to reflect the situated nature of knowledge in

specific contexts and interactions (Mason 2002). In order to obtain nuanced

explanations that go beyond a set of standardised questions, the flexibility and leeway

afforded by semi-structured interviews allows for probes and prompts that allow one to

follow up on unexpected cues as well as obtaining more detailed and complex

responses. In doing so, an iterative building process was used in developing the

framework of issues upon which the interviews were loosely based.

The aim of achieving a ‘conversation with a purpose’ was not easily achieved (Mason

2002: 67). Whilst a professional but relaxed approach was intended to place

interviewees at ease, the lack of a prior relationship between researcher and

interviewee placed increased importance on the introductory part of the process. My

appearance was deliberately casual to minimise any perception of difference in status. I

used the skills derived as a Citizens Advice outreach adviser to ensure my approach was

open, non-judgmental and as a ‘listener’. Prior to the interview, I tried to engage in a

brief informal chat to place the interviewee at ease prior to explaining the interview

process and acquiring formal consent. Whilst semi-structured interviews allow for

some divergence and expansion, the prepared interview schedule formed the

foundation so that research questions could be addressed (Bryman 2012). An element

of triangulation was achieved: document analysis of local authority welfare assistance

was compared against service user experience as well as officers’ responses. The

difference in the objectives and aims of managers was similarly compared against

service user experiences.

Interviews were recorded using a digital recorder and transcribed verbatim and

analysed thematically which heightened awareness of commonalities, differences and

the interconnections between different accounts (for a sample interview, see Appendix

F). The adapted ‘constant comparative method’ proposed by Thomas (2013: 235) was

adopted to ‘label, separate, compile and organise data’ (Charmaz 1983: 186). This was

achieved by highlighting repeated ideas (known as ‘temporary constructs’) from which

‘second-order constructs’ were created after removing ideas that the remainder of the

data did not reinforce (Thomas 2013: 237). Whilst this created a literal reading of the

data, I reflexively considered the ‘silences’ before interpreting the data as part of the

broader social processes that made up the data.

Limitations

It would be disingenuous to suggest that there are not imperfections within the

methodology adopted. Clearly, the available resource places restraint on what was

possible to achieve. The focus on only recipients of emergency food implies that when

destitute, the rational response for everyone is to request a referral to an emergency

food provider. This over-simplifies the decision-making process: for instance pride,

stigma, gaps in provision, lack of awareness and accessibility play important parts.

The recruitment of interviewees in Rownbrough was undertaken at the point that users

had received their food in the same setting. Some users want to be in and out as quickly

as possible, not wanting to engage with food bank volunteers or by providing an

interview. One volunteer suggested that this may reflect a degree of embarrassment and

opens up the possibility that the close proximity of the interview setting [to the

emergency food provider] meant interviewees felt less able to be entirely open.

Despite stressing the independence and confidentiality of the research, participants

may retain a perception that their experiences will be ‘shared’. Arguably, these latter

issues are accentuated by the vulnerable position of users. Thus, the form of production

of interviews clearly impacts on findings (Skeggs et al 2008).

CHAPTER 3 FINDINGS AND ANALYSIS

The patchwork of UK emergency food provision is made up of distinct welfare

assistance schemes and contrasting levels and models of emergency food provision

making up a disparate ‘postcode lottery’ for users. Whilst the small-scale nature of the

research means it should be regarded as a snapshot of experience in two local

authorities, it was considered the two organisations used were not so anomalous that

insight gained from them would not be relevant to understanding issues pertaining to

the catalysts, consequences, sustainability and future policy direction of emergency

food provision. Names and identifiers are changed in order to afford anonymity.

Primary catalysts

The data gathered in the study suggests catalysts for emergency food referral broadly

mirror previous research (Scottish Government 2013, Lambie-Mumford 2014) in

consisting primarily of benefit changes (including sanctions), benefit delays and low

income (see Appendix D for a user summary). Arguably changes and delays, in their

benign language, place insufficient emphasis on the efficacy of a system in which some

participants had been waiting up to seven weeks for claims to be processed:

My paperwork for ESA ... they said they hadn’t received it so they are resending the

form back out so I’ve had to get another sick note. I am having to do this all over

again and still I’ve had no money for six weeks (Darren, Rownbrough)

Additionally, sanctions were found to be a frequent trigger in emergency food referrals.

Their increased prevalence is illustrated by Ian (Benefits Manager, Rownbrough)

observing ‘sanctions has kind of kicked off big time last autumn’, and echoed by Jim,

Benefits Manager in Ellingham:

sanctions was quite topical and we did react to those ... because there’s some

horrendous stories

Reasons for sanctioning often appeared coercive and poorly communicated. Poppy was

sanctioned for missing an appointment due to an emergency hospital admission whilst

David was sanctioned due to missing an appointment letter as it had been sent to his old

hostel address. On both occasions, the explanation only followed the stopping of

payment. Even users not sanctioned told of the thresholds and difficulties in complying

with tighter jobseeking requirements:

The Jobcentre became a lot more stricter, a lot more, regulations became in place,

whereas before it was apply for 3 jobs per week and then it went up to 5 jobs per

week and then it went up to 10 jobs per week and obviously with the economy,

there wasn’t 10 jobs out there (Kyle, Ellingham)

if you don’t get 10 jobs in yer book, they sanction you for four week (Mary,

Ellingham)

Interestingly, the data provided convincing evidence that the adequacy of benefits is an

important determinant in emergency food use. The combination of low benefit levels

and an increasing cost of living created a precarious form of existence in which people

articulated their susceptibility to crisis. Jane, Advice Manager in Ellingham, highlights

how this is intensified for young people living independently who receive ‘£14.75 a

week less than that for somebody who is over 25, well ... your gas bill is the same, your

electricity, your food bills are the same’. The lived experiences corroborated those

difficulties:

It’s impossible ... to me personally, you can’t live off that a week, not with yer gas

and electric and all the other debts and food and toiletries and stuff like that, you

can’t live off that forty three pound a week. It’s not impossible, it’s obviously not

impossible, but it’s hard, it’s very hard (Nikki, 22).

Clearly at one level, young people have no choice and indeed data revealed different

coping strategies – for instance, asking families and friends for help – but the fragility of

life is also affirmed by Kyle:

And that’s not a chance you can live on fifty six pound per week, there’s no way you

can do that, it amazes me that so many young people do manage to do it ... it’s not a

standard of living, it’s just getting by

Unintended consequences

Data revealed a number of exclusionary impacts although that was counterbalanced by

positive narratives of human relationships, which contrasted starkly to interactions

with the state. The patchiness of provision – in terms of location, accessibility and

opening hours – was remarked on by users, managers and local authority

representatives as problematic.

Sally, Head of Public Affairs for an international charity, used an anecdote to illustrate

how the Trussell Trust franchise model does not necessarily match provision with need:

There are three seaside towns in a row, a posh one, a not so posh one and a grim

one ... so the [Trussell Trust] foodbank is in a warehouse church in the posh town

which is where that kind of church has sprung up and [we] are in the grotty one so

[our] officer said to me [people] can’t afford the bus fare to get to the foodbank

The data also questions the Trussell Trust model’s assumption they provide crisis

support whilst the referring agency resolves the ‘underlying issue’. Some users did

speak of overcoming temporary issues but for others, the issue was more

fundamental as Michael explains:

well for me, there’s not enough for me to live on what I get and I found myself just

slipping ever so slightly every fortnight a little bit further into debt.

The inability to solve what are structural issues is revealed by Jane:

for the first time in my work as an advice worker which runs well over 20 years

now, I am feeling on occasions that there is nothing we can do for people and I

know that people are literally destitute, that they don’t have food provision and

what’s particularly concerning to us is this effective self-disconnection that’s

happening with people’s utilities (Advice Manager, Ellingham)

Some respondents reinforced this point by explaining that even when provided with

food, they had no cooking facilities. Sometimes this was due to not having a cooker

whilst on others it related to insufficient money for prepayment meters.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, users spoke about theft as a potential coping strategy. Darren,

49, who had spent two thirds of his life in prison, spoke of how ‘it’s been difficult not to

return to criminality to survive’. Becky, as a sixteen year old, ‘used to steal food

sometimes from the shops ... just little things ... like a pasty or a tin of beans or

something’.

The data uncovered contrasting emotions when participants were asked to reflect on

the experience of emergency food. At one level, there was an almost uniform expression

of gratitude that simultaneously clashed with the unease of being gifted food:

I am grateful they give me it but each time it is still ‘oooh’ they’re handing me this

type like, how can I describe it, almost like a desperation type thing and I still do

feel a bit of that each time they give me that but obviously I am grateful for

whatever they give me. (Aisling, 18).

Whilst users were generally glowing in their praise of the emergency food

providers, stigma was expressed through a range of words synonymous with the

concept. So words like ‘embarrassing’, ‘desperate’, ‘weird’, ‘scary’, ‘ashamed’,

‘trepidation’, ‘nervous’ and ‘negative’ were used to convey the emotions associated

with the process. Mary demonstrates its exclusionary nature:

I didn’t even want to go in library, I felt so small. Having to ask somebody for food,

ringing, I were looking round in library to make sure nobody could hear me

because I were embarrassed.

A closer look at the data indicates how this feeling of stigma is linked to the restriction

of autonomy. Being independent was very important for participants, especially the

young people in Ellingham. Needing to use emergency food or borrow money from

friends and family was regarded by many users as being reliant, and restricting their

ability to define their own biographies. Whilst some expressed anger at what they

perceived a sense of unfairness, most users articulated a sense of resigned acceptance.

When asked about the quantity and quality of food, users often turned the question

round suggesting choice was of low priority:

Beggars can’t be choosers, you know what I mean ... food’s food isn’t it? (Mark)

Food’s food, you can’t be picky in this life. Do you know what I mean? In this

world ... Like I say, you can’t be picky. You can’t choose. If you are hungry, you are

hungry. You will eat what you need to eat. You know. To not be hungry. (Poppy)

I get what I’ve got given if that makes sense. (Aisling)

Despite the stigma experienced by users, the data introduced a new aspect that has

hitherto received little attention within food bank literature. The emphasis on

human relationship and a friendly, non-judgmental space was clear from interviews

with managers, volunteers and users in both cities. Nathan, the manager at

Rownbrough, described their approach:

I’ve always kind of clung to this kind of theory [that] transformation comes through

relationship really so ... people’s lives don’t get turned around by sitting opposite

somebody at a Jobcentre, because there’s no relationship there ... some people will

come and sit down for forty five minutes and they will tell you their whole life

story.

Although Nathan warns this approach is far from uniform, suggesting a more

impersonal approach in larger cities – ‘you just turn up, get your food and go’ –

users in Rownbrough certainly appreciated the warmth and friendliness of the

welcome:

the best thing is having a cup of tea and some biscuits and a nice chat while you

were waiting (Mark)

I’m overwhelmed, emotionally, I’m overwhelmed, and with the offer of a prayer,

that meant a lot you know. I’ve never really opened my eyes up to people being

there for everybody, you know. (Darren)

This was mirrored by an informal discussion with a volunteer who said users often

drop by for a cup of tea and a chat after exhausting the ‘three vouchers in six

months’ rule. This positive experience was contrasted to relationships with state

organisations that were seen as uncaring and bureaucratic. Jake (19) explains the

difference:

well if I went to Jobcentre, I’d tell em what I’ve been doing on Universal Jobmatch

and when I’m here, I don’t. I just tell them everything. Like my family, my friends,

how many brothers and sisters I’ve got ... I feel perfect. Cos I can express my

feelings.

The sustainability of the emergency food model

Sustainability can be evaluated both from a user perspective as well as the long-

term viability of the food bank models. Whilst all users expressed gratitude, the

difference between the Trussell Trust and Fareshare experience was marked. Whilst

a Trussell Trust food parcel is expected to last three days, many users suggested it

would last them longer, with estimates between five days and up to two weeks

although some people felt non-food items were overlooked. As Michael says, ‘it

might sound cheeky but a toilet roll wouldn’t go amiss’.

In contrast, staff in Ellingham were more critical of the deterioration in quantity and

quality of the weekly Fareshare delivery which they attributed to increased demand

on Fareshare services, therefore restricting supply. Ellingham users generally

regarded the scheme as a supplement. Its erratic and stop-gap nature is recalled

here by Becky:

It wasn’t a lot … like you’d get jars of things but nothing to use them with so like

pasta sauce without any pasta, and biscuits and things that aren’t really enough for

a whole meal … I remember like having food and just eating it all cos you’re really

hungry and then you just go without, for a few days sometimes.

The best reviews were reserved for the Ellingham Local Welfare Assistance scheme,

which supplied successful applicants with a basket of goods from a national

supermarket chain. Jim (Benefits Manager) explained Ellingham’s objective was to

make a ‘sizeable award … which actually safeguarded the week for [applicants]’.

Staff and users were similarly positive:

I have very few complaints about the Local Welfare Support scheme … I think it’s

about an effective scheme as could have been produced. (Jane, Advice Manager)

It lasted me nearly two week … yeah, it were ace. The food, it wasn’t [Keymarket’s]

own brand, it were the other one up, so they didn’t even me bring me [the basic

range], they brought me proper mince, chicken, everything, it were mad. (Mary)

Nonetheless, such provision is by no means universal and indeed in Rownbrough,

the Local Welfare Assistance scheme is constructed very differently with no food

basket awards, a significantly lower successful award ratio and almost no

knowledge of the scheme within the city.

In evaluating emergency food from a social justice perspective, interviews

considered how health needs were met. Whilst health was an issue, users’ priorities

invariably surrounded alleviating acute hunger:

It was just cheap stuff. I remember getting hot dogs, two tins of hot dogs. I ate them

all at once. Bit disgusting. But yeah, it was things like that. Nothing that was really

healthy or good for you, you know, no fruits or vegetables. Just tins and things. And

biscuits. (Becky, Fareshare user)

Whilst Nathan (foodbank manager, Rownbrough) spoke of how the non-perishable

set list compiled by Trussell Trust was ‘nutritionally balanced’ (see Appendix E), the

storage of fruit and vegetables was considered too problematic. It is also

questionable whether either model provides for the specific dietary requirements

(eg vitamins, calorie intake) of some health conditions described by users.

The articulated acuteness of the need for food supported the view food banks

address absolute rather than relative poverty. Whilst the temporality of experience

varied, at the point of crisis users’ needs were consistently severe. Whilst managers

acknowledged the importance of upstream work to challenge policy, the lack of

capacity to do so suggested a subliminal prioritization of downstream work. The

lack of campaigning work opens up a discursive space for users to be tagged

‘deserving’ or otherwise as Jane (Advice Manager) argues:

The issue with food banks that I find quite disturbing ... there’s a feel of the

deserving poor that I feel creeps into the debate ... and [for] other people ... it’s

about poor choices that people make. Well, choices often relate to opportunities.

Whilst partly sympathetic to the circumstances of applicants, there was

nevertheless evidence in Rownbrough of how ‘policy as discourse’ can become

enmeshed with pejorative portrayals:

it’s not as easy to winkle the money out of us as it was the DWP ...we have to eyeball

them, we eyeball them ... it is less easy for them to hoodwink us (Ian, Benefits

Manager)

Linkage between the state and emergency food providers

Whilst data demonstrated linkages in both cities, the difference in approach was

marked. In Rownbrough, the local authority clearly identified the food bank as a

legitimate resource for referring applicants for emergency support as shown by Ian

(Benefits Manager):

Because this fund is cash limited ... where we can preserve that fund and redirect

for people elsewhere, that would be our preference and that’s where the foodbank

kinda comes in ... and the foodbank at that time was beginning to expand and it

seemed a kind of neat fit.

This deflection was reinforced by data in Rownbrough that demonstrated evidence

of gatekeeping, poor awareness (see Appendix D) and restrictive eligibility criteria.

Whilst Ian said ‘the [eligibility] criteria is wider than under the [previous] DWP

scheme’, on inspection the reverse was true. Whilst officers acknowledged that

excluding sanctioned people from the scheme required reconsideration as a ‘food

voucher doesn’t really cut the mustard’ (Andy, Customer Services Manager), their

policy remains unchanged despite only spending approximately 50% of the central

government grant in 2013/14.

The Ellingham approach was very different. Rather than looking to ‘preserve’ the

fund, officers aimed for a rapid 24 hour turn-around to applications, operated out of

hours including bank holidays, launched the scheme to 350 advice workers and

were in the process of publicising it within GP surgeries. The eligibility criterion

only excluded non-residents or people ineligible to receive public funds. Any

underspend was channelled into initiative advice funding. Ellingham showed no

appetite for any referral process between local authority and foodbanks although

some initial foodbank funding had been provided.

Different policy mechanisms illuminate how local authorities can widen or narrow

take-up. The ‘Interactive Voice Response message’ was used to make the Ellingham

application process more welcoming, resulting in a 20% increase in applications.

Different marketing clearly impacted on take-up. Whilst only 2 of 7 Rownbrough

users knew of the Local Welfare Assistance Scheme, only 2 of 7 didn’t know in

Ellingham (see Appendix D). This implies agencies either choose to refer clients to

the foodbank or alternatively don’t know of the Local Welfare Assistance Scheme.

Nathan (Foodbank manager, Rownbrough) expressed some regret at providing a

referral arrangement to the local authority but also a sense of irritation :

The thing that annoys me is that the Financial Assistance Scheme is not very well

advertised so I suspect that a lot of people coming to us would qualify for that but

just don’t know about it ... I now give a little plugs for the Financial Assistance

Scheme ... and what’s fascinating is that ... even local authority teams ... they don’t

know it exists.

The process of administrative gatekeeping extended to the availability of short term

benefit advances by the DWP, a payment that can be made when waiting for a claim

to be processed. Both local authorities revealed how awareness and confusion on

eligibility meant people being inappropriately referred to their local schemes by the

DWP. Mark explains how both the national and local state retreated from providing

him with assistance:

I went to the Jobcentre to enquire about my claim and when it was going to be

ready. They said go to the council and ask for whatever they call, what they call

what used to be a crisis loan now. Then they’ll give you some sort of financial help.

So I went there, went and enquired in the council office and they said yes, but even

we are slow at sorting things out, but the CAB ... they can help you out with the food

bank ... so I spoke to a lady in Citizens Advice ... she gave me a voucher for the

foodbank.

Instances such as these demonstrate state retrenchment and a growing reliance by

the state on emergency food providers.

CHAPTER 4 DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION

At the outset the controversy over any causal linkage between emergency food use and

welfare reform was highlighted. Empirical data presented in this research, supported by

Lambie-Mumford (2014) and Scottish Government (2013), suggests the adequacy of

social security provision, its conditional nature and the efficacy of the processes through

which it is delivered, all contribute to demand. Despite that, attributing the increase in

emergency food use to a specific factor (see Trussell Trust voucher, Appendix E) seems

reductionist. Rather than perceiving these as ‘reasons’ or ‘causes’, they are arguably

better regarded as the catalyst that pushes people through the state safety net. The

commonality between emergency food users therefore is an experience of deep poverty,

which makes users susceptible to crisis (eg the catalyst). Whilst in the past people could

call on the Social Fund, the spatial unevenness of local emergency provision means

assistance is unpredictable and is likely to further deteriorate when central government

grants are removed in 2015.

Participants in Rownbrough were largely made up of working age adults without

dependent children, corresponding with MacInnes et al’s (2013) analysis that this group

are increasingly susceptible to poverty, with a poverty rate that is the highest in thirty

years. The research also showed the lived hardships, and sometimes destitution,

experienced by young people in Ellingham who when out of work were expected to live

independently for 25% less money than those aged over 25. Young people’s

disproportionate susceptibility to sanctions (YMCA 2014) combined with Cameron’s

proposals to further cut their entitlement (Grice 2013) suggests both young people as

well as working-age adults without dependent children warrant specific policy

attention in future research. The high susceptibility to financial crisis can be observed if

one compares the current rate for Jobseekers Allowance for under 25s (£56.75) with

the minimum amount a member of the public believes is required for food for a single

person, £50.11. (Hirsch 2013).

The consequences of eroding the welfare safety net together with the emergence of

emergency food provision can be broken down into three areas: firstly, the coping

strategies to deep poverty, secondly the psycho-social impacts and lastly how the

depoliticisation of hunger has facilitated state retrenchment.

Whilst Lister (2004: 130) proposes a fluid taxonomy to explain the forms of agency

used when faced with poverty, arguably the deeper nature of poverty experienced by

respondents in this research suggests ‘getting by’ was the predominant reaction.

Coping strategies included borrowing from friends and family, small-scale theft and

desperation for any work despite poor conditions, low pay and churning. Emergency

food is an emergent strategy that can bridge a very temporary gap. Whilst anger was

observed, this usually manifested itself as a distrust of the ‘system’ and similar to Dean’s

(2002) study, users regarded decently paid work as the best solution rather than more

radical forms of resistance.

Narratives suggested Lister’s (2004) taxonomy is partly outdated: experiences of not

eating for days, even weeks, reflected destitution rather than relative poverty. It is

implausible to suggest three days of emergency food provision, or in the case of

Fareshare a small supplement, is adequate to address sustained hunger. The

incremental nature of welfare sanctions further calls into question how someone might

survive on hardship payments for up to three years. Research by Dwyer and Brown

(2005) into the coping strategies of destitute forced migrants – in which informal

welfare agencies such as churches increasingly took on more responsibility from the

state - suggests a similar pattern emerging on a mainstream scale.

Whilst literature suggests consumer participation is the primary determinant in

avoiding stigma (Ridge 2002), the research supports the argument that food is a social

marker (Dobson et al 2001). The words used in narratives, which Retzinger (1995:

1107) refers as ‘colloquialisms of shame’, support the argument that shame is at the

‘irreducible, absolutist core’ of poverty (Sen 1983: 159). Scheff (2000), whilst

acknowledging the emotion of shame, suggests an absence of critique within the social

matrix. The emergency food provider provides a locale in which shame can be both

internalised and projected.

In this research, the internal trigger of shame was often borne out of a failure to meet

aspirations to live independent lives. Being independent is often seen as pivotal to being

a worthy citizen and therefore the absence of a locus of control was not only injurious in

reducing self-esteem but was observed in social withdrawal (see Chase and Walker

2013), evidenced by users who were ‘in and out’ of the foodbank as quickly as possible.

There was also a period in Rownbrough where fifty percent of foodbank vouchers

issued by the local authority were not used. Whilst this was attributed to recipients not

‘needing’ food, an alternative explanation is they were deterred by the prospect of

attending a foodbank.

External triggers of shame may be seen through the prevalence of underclass rhetoric,

now seen in ‘poverty porn’ TV programmes such as ‘Benefit Street’ or ‘We all pay your

benefits’ in which taxpayers are pitched against benefit recipients. The construction of

normative values in which success and participation are only measured through paid

work was echoed frequently in interviews – for instance, Mary mentioned her desire

and need to get a job on eight separate occasions without any prompt. Emergency food

providers may accentuate the deserving and undeserving dichotomy, especially as the

Trussell Trust model is also conditional on assessed need through the voucher referral

system. The impacts of shame are multiple. As well as a loss of self-respect (Rawls

1973), increased vulnerability and a deterioration of physical and mental health may

result in a worsening of self and therefore an increased risk of poverty, suggesting the

temporary benefit of emergency food may be outweighed by its risks.

This silent rolling-back of state obligations – as seen by Riches (1997, 2011) and

Poppendieck (1998) in Canada and the US respectively – can now be witnessed through

the emerging linkage between UK welfare institutions and food providers. Evidence of a

discretionary residualisation of emergency aid is borne out by the research and is likely

to worsen when central government ceases funding in 2015. Retrenchment is

paradoxically accompanied by an interventionist and punitive state, evidenced

particularly in the growth of sanctions. The evidence of administrative and

diversionary gatekeeping, the poor awareness of local welfare assistance schemes

(evidenced in Rownbrough), and the cutting of all local welfare assistance funding in

2015 suggest a neoliberal drift focussed on ‘small government’, which the likes of

Ellingham may find difficult to resist.

If so, Riches (1997) was prescient in arguing the institutionalisation of food banks helps

depoliticise the issue by persuading the public – through media and food drives – that

the issue of hunger needs to be dealt with by the charitable sector. Failing to frame the

issue as acute hunger and a public health risk - and therefore an urgent public policy

issue - moreover undermines the argument that there needs to be a ‘right to food’.

Whilst still persuaded that Lambie-Mumford (2014) and Dobson et al (2001) are

correct to argue for the enforcement of such rights, one can conclude the ‘vague,

discretionary’ nature of [food] rights fails to lend ‘themselves to enforcement’ (Evju

2009: 83) and are therefore unlikely to materialise in the near future.

Two proposals are therefore advanced as a means to re-politicise the issue. Whilst

measuring poverty has always been contentious, the 2013 Monitoring Poverty and

Social Exclusion report acknowledges recent decreases in overall poverty rates, due to

lower median income, obscures the squeeze on those with lowest incomes (MacInnes et

al 2013). Introducing a Food Energy Intake measure may address this by highlighting

the extent of food deprivation. The measure relates to the income level required at

which a person’s food energy intake is sufficient to meet a basic nutritional requirement

(for instance 2350 calories in Pakistan). In reflecting income levels and the cost of food,

it is a more sophisticated measure of poverty that draws attention to how many people

are failing to receive basic food needs (Burki et al 2012). By adopting this frame in

mainstream discourse (see Lakoff 2004), there is the possibility of shifting the Overton

window (the range of ideas that are palatable to the public) and thereby opening up

new policy alternatives including a ‘right to food’.

Participant interviews illustrated the contrast between coercive interactions with state

institutions and the open, friendly welcome by emergency food providers. Arguably,

whilst a symbolic space for shaming, the emergency food provider can also act as a ‘safe’

and ‘trusting’ space. If that space can be utilised to not only provide emergency help but

also affirm dignity and integrity through collective self-empowerment and political

action, there is the possibility they can provide a platform for what bell hooks (1994)

refers as a politics of representation and recognition. Whilst requiring a radical shift in

ethos by food providers, the concept of self-reliance and highlighting social injustice

were stated objectives by emergency providers in the research. Clearly, the nature of

the empowerment and the overt politicisation may create unease within some

organisations, especially as it threatens the alluring Wenceslas syndrome (Poppendieck

1998). I argue however that any solutions are likely, as Riches (2011: 768) phrases it, to

fall ‘outside the charitable food box’. Whilst I don’t argue self-empowerment per se – for

instance an organisation like The Stop in Toronto - can necessarily resolve the scale of

hunger, the reformulation of the food bank model to provide a space to exercise political

agency and self-empowerment has potential. Against conventional wisdom, Lawless and

Fox (2001: 362) found ‘severe economic hardship ... served as significant experiences

that bolstered the willingness to participate in the political system’. Self-help may

therefore be regarded as a process towards a ‘progressive’ realisation of human rights

(Davy et al 2013).

This small-scale qualitative research has drawn tentative conclusions, which should be

best treated as themes for further exploration. We explored how catalysts for food bank

demand – for instance benefits delays, changes, sanctions – should not be confused with

the reasons, which are argued primarily to relate to low income, exacerbated by the

residualisation of social security and the spatial unevenness of emergency assistance.

The empirical research revealed how the emergency food provider can be seen as an

exclusionary and symbolic space for castigation but once breached, can provide a

welcoming and safe sanctuary. Whilst shame was internalised by users, research also

indicated how shame was projected through interpersonal and structural interactions

in which the edicts of a neoliberal state were enacted. This neoliberal shift was

observed in the paring-back of state obligations whereby users were not only overtly

referred to emergency food providers but through other policy mechanisms such as

administrative gatekeeping. The process of depoliticisation – and the postcode lottery of

emergency assistance - questions the feasibility of realising a ‘right to food’. If such a

right is to be achieved, I argue a re-politicisation is required in which the trust and

public legitimacy garnered in the emergency food network, by both users and the

public, is utilised to not only realise a sense of collective self-help but also political

agency. This process may be helped through the introduction of a Food Energy Intake

measure, and thereby heightened public awareness of the extent and acuteness of

hunger in the UK.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Arksey, H. and Knight, P. (1999). Interviewing for social scientists : an introductory

resource with examples. London: SAGE.

BBC News. (2013). Numbers relying on food banks triple in a year. [Online]. [Accessed 17

October 2013]. Available from World Wide Web:

<http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-24536817>.

Beatty, C. and Fothergill, S. (2013). Hitting the poorest places hardest. The local and

regional impact of welfare reform. Sheffield: Sheffield Hallam University.

Berger, L. (2013). People don't visit food banks because 'they're unable to manage their

finances', Mr Gove. [Online]. [Accessed 15 September 2013]. Available from

World Wide Web: <http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/people-

dont-visit-food-banks-because-theyre-unable-to-manage-their-finances-mr-

gove-8810005.html>.

Betterway Demo. (2014). About demo. [Online]. [Accessed 1 March 2014]. Available

from World Wide Web: <http://abetterwaydemo.org/about/>.

Bingham, J. (2014). New Cardinal Vincent Nichols: welfare cuts ‘frankly a disgrace’.

[Online]. [Accessed 15 February 2014]. Available from World Wide Web:

<http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/10639015/New-Cardinal-Vincent-

Nichols-welfare-cuts-frankly-a-disgrace.html>.

Blaikie, N.W.H. (2010). Designing social research : the logic of anticipation. 2nd ed.

Cambridge: Polity Press Ltd.

Blond, P. (2012). David Cameron has lost his chance to redefine the Tories. [Online].

[Accessed 18 October 2013]. Available from World Wide Web:

<http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/oct/03/cameron-one-

nation-u-turn-tory-tragedy>.

Briant, E.,Watson, N. and Philo, G. (2011). 'Bad news for disabled people: how the

newspapers are reporting disability'. [Online]. [Accessed 15 December 2013].

Available from World Wide Web:

<http://www.gla.ac.uk/media/media_214917_en.pdf>.

British Educational Research Association. (2011). Ethical Guidelines for Educational

Research. [Online]. [Accessed 10 October 2013]. Available from World Wide

Web: <http://www.bera.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/BERA-Ethical-

Guidelines-2011.pdf>.

Bryman, A. (2012). Social research methods. 4th ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

BSA (British Sociological Association). (2002). Statement of Ethical Practice for the

British Sociological Association (March 2002). [Online]. [Accessed 10 October

2013]. Available from World Wide Web:

<http://www.britsoc.co.uk/about/equality/statement-of-ethical-practice.aspx>.

Buckingham, H. (2012). 'Capturing Diversity: A Typology of Third Sector Organisations'

Responses to Contracting Based on Empirical Evidence from Homelessness

Services'. Journal of Social Policy. 41, 569-589.

Burke, E. (1910). Reflections on the French revolution & other essays. London New York:

J.M. Dent & Sons Ltd ; E.P. Dutton & Co.

Burki, A.A.,Khan, M.A. and Malik, S. (2012). From Chronic Disease to Food Poverty:

Empirical Evidence from the Panel Data of Pakistan. [Online]. [Accessed 15

February 2014]. Available from World Wide Web:

<http://lums.edu.pk/docs/dprc/Burki-Khan-Malik-Paper-Chronic-disease-and-

poverty.pdf>.

Butler, P. (2013a). Oxfam chief: charity begins at home. [Online]. [Accessed 16 October

2013]. Available from World Wide Web:

<http://www.theguardian.com/society/2013/oct/16/oxfam-charity-food-

banks-uk>.

Butler, P. (2013b). Welfare minister urges local councils to invest in food banks. [Online].

[Accessed 13 December 2013]. Available from World Wide Web:

<http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2013/dec/13/welfare-minister-local-

councils-food-banks>.

Butler, P. (2014a). Scottish government report links welfare reform to food bank growth.

[Online]. [Accessed 16 January 2014]. Available from World Wide Web:

<http://www.theguardian.com/society/patrick-butler-cuts-

blog/2014/jan/16/scottish-govt-links-welfare-cuts-to-rise-in-food-banks>.

Butler, P. (2014b). Government to stop funding for low-income families facing

emergencies. [Online]. [Accessed 3 January 2014]. Available from World Wide

Web: <http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/jan/03/government-stops-

emergency-funds-low-income-families>.

Butler, P., Arnett, G., Marsh, S. and Jeraj, S. (2014). Councils sit on £67m in emergency help

for poor. [Online]. [Accessed 20 April 2014]. Available from World Wide Web:

<http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/apr/20/emergency-welfare-

scheme-local-councils>.

Cameron, D. (2014). David Cameron: Why the Archbishop of Westminster is wrong about

welfare. [Online]. Available from World Wide Web:

<http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/david-cameron/10646421/David-

Cameron-Why-the-Archbishop-of-Westminster-is-wrong-about-welfare.html>.

Campbell, C.C. and Desjardins, E. (1989). 'A model and research approach for studying

the management of limited food resources by low income families'. Journal of

Nutrition Education. 21 (4), 162-171.

Castles, F.G. and Obinger, H. (2008). 'Worlds, families, regimes: Country clusters in

European and OECD area public policy'. West European Politics. 31 (1-2), 321-

344.

CESCR (Committee on Economic Social and Cultural Rights). (1999). General comment

12: the right to adequate food. UN Doc. E/C/12/1999/5. [Online]. [Accessed 18

October 2013]. Available from World Wide Web:

<http://tbinternet.ohchr.org/_layouts/treatybodyexternal/Download.aspx?sym

bolno=E%2fC.12%2f1999%2f5&Lang=en>.

CESCR (Committee on Economic Social and Cultural Rights). (2000). General Comment

14: The right to the highest attainable standard of health. UN Doc. E/C.12.2000/4.

[Online]. [Accessed 23 October 2013.]. Available from World Wide Web:

<http://tbinternet.ohchr.org/_layouts/treatybodyexternal/Download.aspx?sym

bolno=E%2fC.12%2f2000%2f4&Lang=en>.

CFC Canada. (2012). The Stop: How the fight for good food transformed a community and

inspired a movement. [Online]. [Accessed 16 December 2013]. Available from

World Wide Web: <http://cfccanada.ca/book>.

Charmaz, K. (1983). ‘The Grounded Theory Method: An Explication and Interpretation’.

In: R. M. Emerson (ed). Contemporary Field Research: A Collection of Readings.

Boston: Little Brown.

Chase, E. and Walker, R. (2013). 'The co-construction of shame in the context of poverty:

beyond a threat to the social bond'. Sociology. 47 (4), 739-754.

Coffey, A. and Atkinson, P. (1996). Making sense of qualitative data : complementary

research strategies. Thousand Oaks ; London: Sage Publications.

Cooper, N. and Dumpleton, S. (2013). Walking the breadline: the scandal of food poverty

in 21st century britain. [Online]. [Accessed 15 October 2013]. Available from

World Wide Web: <http://www.church-

poverty.org.uk/walkingthebreadline/info/report/walkingthebreadlinefile>.

Davy, B., Davy, U. and Leisering, L. (2013). 'The global, the social and rights. New

perspectives on social citizenship'. International Journal of Social Welfare. 22

(S1), S1-S14.

Dean, H. (2002). Welfare rights and social policy. Harlow: Prentice Hall.

Dean, H. (2010). Understanding Human Need. Bristol: The Policy Press.

Dobson, B., Dowler, E. and Turner, S. (2001). Poverty bites Food, health and poor families.

London (United Kingdom): Child Poverty Action Group.

Dowler, E.A. and O'Connor, D. (2012). 'Rights-based approaches to addressing food

poverty and food insecurity in Ireland and UK'. Social Science & Medicine. 74 (1),

44-51.

Drakeford, M. and Davidson, K. (2013). 'Going from bad to worse? Social policy and the

demise of the Social Fund'. Critical Social Policy. 33 (3), 365-383.

Driver, S. and Martell, L. (1997). 'New Labour's communitarianisms'. Critical Social

Policy. 17 (52), 27-46.

Dwyer, P. (2004). ‘Agency, ‘dependency’ and welfare: beyond issues of claim and

contribution?’ In: H. Dean (ed). The Ethics of Welfare Human Rights, Dependency

and Responsibility. Bristol: Polity Press. 135-153.

Dwyer, P. and Brown, D. (2005). 'Meeting basic needs? Forced migrants and welfare'.

Social Policy and Society. 4 (4), p369.

Everton Football Club. (2014). Blues Urged to Aid Food Bank Appeal. [Online]. [Accessed

26 February 2014]. Available from World Wide Web:

<http://www.evertonfc.com/news/archive/2014/02/25/blues-urged-to-aid-

food-bank-appeal>.

Evju, S. (2009). 'Should Norway ratify the Optional Protocol to the ICESCR?–that is the

question'. Nordisk Tidsskrift for Menneskerettigheter. 27 (1), 82-90.

Fareshare. (2013). Tesco to provide 7 million meals. [Online]. [Accessed 16 December

2013]. Available from World Wide Web: <http://www.fareshare.org.uk/tesco-

to-provide-7-million-meals/>.

Fawcett Society. (2012). The Impact of Austerity on Women. Report dated March 2012.

Ferrera, M. (1996). 'The'Southern model'of welfare in social Europe'. Journal of

European social policy. 6 (1), 17-37.

Foodbank Australia. (2013). End Hunger in Australia. Report dated 2013.

Fyfe, N.R. and Milligan, C. (2003). 'Space, citizenship, and voluntarism: critical

reflections on the voluntary welfare sector in Glasgow'. Environment and

Planning A. 35 (11), 2069-2086.

Galeano, E. (2003). Interview with Eduardo Galeano: 'The Progressive'. [Online].

[Accessed 18 November 2013]. Available from World Wide Web:

<http://www.mail-archive.com/ugandanet@kym.net/msg05039.html>.

Galtung, J. (1969). 'Violence, peace, and peace research'. Journal of peace research. 6 (3),

167-191.

Greenhalgh, J. (2012). Accessing research sites and managing your identity as a

researcher in very different research contexts. Current research in Sociology and

Social Policy: the staff/student seminar series. University of Leeds. 15 October

2012.

Grice, A. (2013.). David Cameron: Young People under 25 would not be able to claim

employment or housing benefits under Tory government. [Online]. [Accessed 5

January 2014]. Available from World Wide Web:

<http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/david-cameron-young-

people-under-25-would-not-be-able-to-claim-employment-or-housing-benefits-

under-tory-government-8853560.html>.

Grover, C. (2012). 'Localism and poverty in the United Kingdom: the case of Local

Welfare Assistance'. Policy Studies. 33 (4), 349-365.

Hansard (Lords). (2013). 2 July 2013. Column 1072.

Harris, R. and Seldon, A. (1987). Welfare without the state : a quarter-century of

suppressed public choice. London: Institute of Economic Affairs.

Hirsch, D. (2013.). A minimum income standard for the UK in 2013. [Online]. [Accessed

15 October 2013.]. Available from World Wide Web:

<http://www.jrf.org.uk/sites/files/jrf/income-living-standards-full.pdf>.

Hodgetts, D., Chamberlain, K., Groot, S. and Tankel, Y. (2013). 'Urban Poverty, Structural

Violence and Welfare Provision for 100 Families in Auckland'. Urban Studies. 1-

16.

hooks, b. (1994). Outlaw culture : resisting representations. London: Routledge.

House of Commons Library. (2013). Food Banks and Food Poverty: HC SN06657.

[Online]. [Accessed 15 December 2013]. Available from World Wide Web:

<http://www.parliament.uk/business/publications/research/briefing-

papers/SN06657/food-banks-and-food-poverty>.

Institute for Fiscal Studies. (2014). IFS Green Budget. Report dated January 2014.

Johnston, L. (2013). Food Bank Britain: Thousands need charity handouts because of

welfare system failings. [Online]. [Accessed 17 November 2013]. Available from

World Wide Web: <http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/443511/Food-bank-

Britain-Thousands-need-charity-handouts-because-of-welfare-system-failings>.

Joseph Rowntree Foundation. (2014). Minimum Income Standard. [Online]. [Accessed 15

February 2014]. Available from World Wide Web:

<http://www.jrf.org.uk/topic/mis>.

Judge, L. (2014). How the poor have been hit hardest by inflation. [Online]. [Accessed 6

February 2014]. Available from World Wide Web:

<http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2014/02/how-poor-have-been-hit-

hardest-inflation>.

Killeen, D. (2008). Is Poverty in the UK a Denial of People's Human Rights? Joseph

Rowntree Foundation York.

King, D.S. (1989). ‘Voluntary and state provision of welfare as part of the public-private

continuum: modelling the shifting involvements in Britain and the US’. In: A.

Ware, (ed). Charities and government. Manchester University Press: Manchester.

29-55.

Lakoff, G. (2004). Don't think of an elephant! : know your values and frame the debate :

the essential guide for progressives. White River Junction, Vt.: Chelsea Green Pub.

Co.

Lambie, H. (2011). The Trussell Trust Foodbank Network: Exploring the Growth of

Foodbanks Across the UK. Coventry: Coventry University.

Lambie-Mumford, H. (2013). ''Every Town Should Have One': Emergency Food Banking

in the UK'. Journal of Social Policy. 42 (1), 73-89.

Lambie-Mumford, H. (2014). Food Bank Provision and welfare reform in the UK: SPERI

British Political Economy Brief No. 4. [Online]. [Accessed 15 April 2014]. Available

from World Wide Web: <http://speri.dept.shef.ac.uk/wp-

content/uploads/2014/01/SPERI-British-Political-Economy-Brief-No4-Food-

bank-provision-welfare-reform-in-the-UK.pdf>.

Lambie-Mumford, H., Crossley, D., Jensen, E., Verbeke, M. and Dowler, E. (2014).

Household Food Security in the UK: A Review of Food Aid. Report dated February

2014.

Lang, T. (1997). 'Dividing up the cake: food as social exclusion'. Poverty Publication –

Child Poverty Action Group. 213-230.

Lang, T. (1999). 'The need for a food policy'. Benefits. 24 (Jan/Feb), 1-2.

Laurie, N. and Bondi, L. (2005). Working the spaces of neoliberalism. London: Blackwell.

Lawless, J.L. and Fox, R.L. (2001). 'Political participation of the urban poor'. Social

Problems. 48 (3), 362-385.

Lister, R. (2004). Poverty. Oxford: Polity.

Lister, R. (2010). Understanding theories and concepts in social policy. Bristol: The Policy

Press.

Macinnes, T., Aldridge, H., Bushe, S., Kenway, P. and Tinson, A. (2013). Monitoring

Poverty and Social Exclusion 2013. York: Joseph Rowntree Foundation.

Marcuse, H. (1964). One dimensional man : studies in the ideology of advanced industrial

society. London: Routledge & K. Paul.

Marshall, T.H. (1992). ‘Citizenship and social class’ In: T.H. Marshall

And T. Bottomore (eds). Citizenship and Social Class. London: Pluto Press. 3-39.

Maslow, A.H. (1943). 'A theory of human motivation'. Psychological review. 50 (4), 370.

Mason, J. (2002). Qualitative researching. 2nd ed. London: Sage.

McGlone, P., Dobson, B., Dowler, E. and Nelson, M. (1999). Food projects and how they

work. York: York Publishing Services Limited for the Joseph Rowntree

Foundation.

Metcalf, K.,Minnear, J.,Kleinert, T. and Tedder, V. (2012). 'Community food growing and

the role of women in the alternative economy in Tower Hamlets'. Local Economy.

27 (8), 877-882.

Meyer, S.B. and Lunnay, B. (2013). 'The Application of Abductive and Retroductive

Inference for the Design and Analysis of Theory-Driven Sociological Research'.

Sociological Research Online. 18 (1), 12.

Mohan, J. and Gorsky, M. (2001). Don’t Look Back? Voluntary and charitable finance of

hospitals in Britain, past and present. London: Office of Health Economics.

Morse, F. (2013). Tory MP Paul Maynard suggests food banks could become a "habit" for

people in poverty. [Online]. [Accessed 6 January 2014]. Available from World

Wide Web: <http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/tory-mp-paul-maynard-

suggests-food-banks-could-become-a-habit-for-people-in-poverty-

8855762.html>.

Nagel, T. (1977). 'Poverty and food: Why charity is not enough'. In: P.G. Brown and H.

Shue (eds). Food Policy: The Responsibility of the United States in the Life and

Death Choices. 54-62.

Nat Cen Social Research. (2014). From Food Waste to Fighting Hunger. Report dated

January 2014.

O'Neill, O. (2002). Answer to question Reith Lectures: Lecture 2: Trust and Terror.

[Online]. [Accessed 13 January 2014]. Available from World Wide Web:

<http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/reith2002/lecture2.shtml>.

Padley, M. and Hirsch, D. (2014). 'Households below a minimum income standard,

2008/9 to 2011/12'.

Park, A., Clery, E., Curtice, J., Phillips, M. and Utting, D. (2012). British Social Attitudes: the

29th Report. Report dated 2012.

Patton, M.Q. (2002). Qualitative research & evaluation methods. 3rd ed. London: Sage.

Peck, J. and Tickell, A. (2002). 'Neoliberalizing space'. Antipode. 34 (3), 380-404.

Penner, L.A. (2004). 'Volunteerism and social problems: Making things better or

worse?'. Journal of Social Issues. 60 (3), 645-666.

Perry, K. (2014). Bishops condemn Government welfare reforms. [Online]. [Accessed 20

February 2014]. Available from World Wide Web:

<http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/10650480/Bishops-condemn-

Government-welfare-reforms.html>.

Poppendieck, J. (1999). Sweet charity?: Emergency food and the end of entitlement.

London: Penguin Books.

Rawls, J. (1973). A theory of justice. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Rayner, J. (2013). Food bank Britain: life below the line. [Online]. [Accessed 18 August

2013]. Available from World Wide Web:

<http://www.theguardian.com/society/2013/aug/16/food-bank-britain-jay-

rayner>.

Reed, M. (2013.). Loss of the local safety net is pushing families into poverty. [Online].

[Accessed 14 November 2013]. Available from World Wide Web:

<http://www.theguardian.com/local-government-network/2013/nov/13/local-

authorities-families-poverty-finance>.

Retzinger, S.M. (1995). 'Identifying shame and anger in discourse'. American Behavioral

Scientist. 38 (8), 1104-1113.

Riches, G. (1997). 'Hunger, food security and welfare policies: Issues and debates in

First World societies'. Proceedings of the Nutrition Society. 56 (1A), 63-74.

Riches, G. (2002). 'Food banks and food security: Welfare reform, human rights and

social policy. Lessons from Canada?'. Social Policy & Administration. 36 (6), 648-

663.

Riches, G. (2011). 'Thinking and acting outside the charitable food box: hunger and the

right to food in rich societies'. Development in Practice. 21 (4-5), 768-775.

Ridge, T. (2002). Childhood poverty and social exclusion : from a child's perspective.

Bristol: Policy Press.

Rowntree, B.S. (1901). Poverty : a study of town life. London: Macmillan.

Royston, S. and Rodrigues, L. (2013.). Nowhere to turn? Changes to emergency support.

[Online]. [Accessed 15 October 2013]. Available from World Wide Web:

<http://www.childrenssociety.org.uk/sites/default/files/tcs/nowhere-to-turn-

final.pdf>.

Saul, N. and Curtis, A. (2013). The Stop: How the Fight for Good Food Transformed a

Community and Inspired a Movement. Toronto: Random House Digital, Inc.

Scheff, T.J. (2000). 'Shame and the social bond: A sociological theory'. Sociological

Theory. 18 (1), 84-99.

Scottish Government. (2013). Overview of Food Aid Provision in Scotland. Report dated

December 2013.

Skeggs, B., Thumim, N. and Wood, H. (2008). ''Oh goodness, I am watching reality

TV'How methods make class in audience research'. European journal of cultural

studies. 11 (1), 5-24.

Smith, S.R. (1999). 'Volunteering and community service'. Law and Contemp. Probs. 62,

169.

Standing, G. (2011). 'Behavioural conditionality: why the nudges must be stopped an

opinion piece'. Journal of Poverty and Social Justice. 19 (1), 27-38.

Stuart, T. (2009). Waste : uncovering the global food scandal. London: Penguin.

Tarasuk, V. (2001). 'A critical examination of community-based responses to household

food insecurity in Canada'. Health Education & Behavior. 28 (4), 487-499.

Taylor-Gooby, P. (2013). 'Why Do People Stigmatise the Poor at a Time of Rapidly

Increasing Inequality, and What Can Be Done About It?'. Political Quarterly. 84

(1), 31-42.

Taylor-Robinson, D.,Rougeaux, E.,Harrison, D.,Whitehead, M.,Barr, B. and Pearce, A.

(2013). 'Malnutrition and Economic Crisis: The rise of food poverty in the UK'.

British Medical Journal. 347.

Thériault, L. and Yadlowski, L. (2000). 'Revisiting the food bank issues in Canada'.

Canadian Social Work Review/Revue canadienne de service social. 17 (2), 205-

223.

Thomas, G. (2013). How to do your research project : a guide for students in education

and applied social sciences. Second edition. ed. Los Angeles, Calif.: SAGE.

Toynbee, P. (2013). If Britain's charities are gagged, who will stop this lobbying bill?

[Online]. [Accessed 18 October 2013]. Available from World Wide Web:

<http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/oct/18/if-charities-

gagged-who-will-stop-lobbying-bill>.

Travers, K.D. (1996). 'The social organization of nutritional inequities'. Social Science &

Medicine. 43 (4), 543-553.

Trussell Trust. (2013). Start a foodbank. [Online]. [Accessed 18 October 2013]. Available

from World Wide Web: <http://www.trusselltrust.org/start-a-foodbank>.

Trussell Trust. (2014). Latest foodbank figures top 900,000: Life has got worse, not better

for poorest in 2013/14, and this is just the tip of the iceberg. [Online]. [Accessed 17

April 2014]. Available from World Wide Web:

<http://www.trusselltrust.org/foodbank-figures-top-900000>.

United Nations. (2014). United Nations Treaty Series Online Collection. [Online].

[Accessed 18 February 2014]. Available from World Wide Web:

<https://treaties.un.org/Pages/UNTSOnline.aspx?id=1>.

University of Leeds. (2013). University of Leeds Research Ethics Policy [Online].

[Accessed 10 October 2013]. Available from World Wide Web:

<http://researchsupportarchive.leeds.ac.uk/images/uploads/docs/Research_Et

hics_Policy.pdf>.

Unwin, J. (2013.). What future for a devolved approach to opposing poverty? Some

reflections from research and from experience [Online]. [Accessed 15 January

2014]. Available from World Wide Web:

<http://www.jrf.org.uk/sites/files/jrf/julia-unwin-glamorgan-opposing-

poverty.pdf>.

Wakefield, S.,Fleming, J.,Klassen, C. and Skinner, A. (2013). 'Sweet Charity, revisited:

Organizational responses to food insecurity in Hamilton and Toronto, Canada'.

Critical Social Policy. 33 (3), 427-450.

Williams, F. (1992). 'Somewhere over the rainbow: universality and diversity in social

policy'. Social policy review. 4, 200-19.

Williams, R. (2013). Red Cross to launch winter food aid plan for Britain's needy. [Online].

[Accessed 11 October 2013]. Available from World Wide Web:

<http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/10371511/Red-Cross-to-launch-

winter-food-aid-plan-for-Britains-needy.html>.

Wilson, B. and Tsoa, E. (2001). Hunger count 2001: food bank lines in insecure times.

Toronto: Canadian Association of Food Banks.

Wintour, P. (2014). Record number of sanctions made against benefits claimants in 2013.

[Online]. [Accessed 19 February 2014]. Available from World Wide Web:

<http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/feb/19/record-number-

sanctions-benefits-claimants>.

Wright, S. (2003). ‘The street level implementation of unemployment policy’. In: J. Millar

(ed). Understanding Social Security. The Policy Press: Bristol.

YMCA. (2014). Processed and Punished: An insight into vulnerable young people’s

perspectives on the current welfare system and Jobcentre Plus. Report dated March

2014.

APPENDIX A Ethics approval and correspondence

Ethics Committee application form

E-mail correspondence between Research Ethics and Applicant

Further clarification from Applicant

Ethical approval letter dated 8 January 2014

E-mails confirming formal permission from recruiting charities

APPENDIX B – Participant Information Sheet

APPENDIX C – Consent form

APPENDIX D – Summary user table

Summary user table

NB. All names and places anonymised

Name

Place

Age

Catalyst/reason

for

emergency

food

No of

times

used

Aware of

local

welfare

assistance

scheme

Ever

received

benefits

sanction?

Kyle

Ellingham

Migration from

ESA

Multiple

Yes

Nikki

Ellingham

Insufficient

income

Multiple

Yes

Aisling

Ellingham

Insufficient

income

Multiple

Yes

Becky

Ellingham

Insufficient

income

Multiple

Mary

Ellingham

Benefit efficacy

Multiple

Yes

Lyndsey

Ellingham

Benefit efficacy

Multiple

Yes

Lauren

Ellingham

Domestic

abuse

Multiple

Poppy

Rownbrough

Benefit efficacy

Yes

David

Rownbrough

Benefit

sanction

Yes

Mark

Rownbrough

Benefit efficacy

Yes (not

used)

Peter

Rownbrough

Waiting for

first payday

Michael

Rownbrough

Insufficient

income

Darren

Rownbrough

Benefit efficacy

Jake

Rownbrough

Benefit

sanction

Yes

APPENDIX E – Sample shopping list and Voucher

100

APPENDIX F – Sample interview

Sample interview (with foodbank manager)

Q So if you can start by telling me your position and role within the organisation

A So I am the foodbank manager, current, although we have just recruited someone else

to take on my role from the end of September. I will then switch to being the Chair of the

Trustees of York Foodbank the charity. I was involved right from the start of York

Foodbank kind of coordinating the project getting the project off the ground, um, and I

have been doing that ever since

Q Ok and could you describe to me what you see the role of foodbank as

A yes, so the foodbank is very much about helping people out who hit a crisis where

they cannot afford to buy food for themselves or their family. If they have a family it is

very much a short term, only 3 days of food, we kind of where it fits in terms of other

agencies I like to view the Foodbank as a bit of a safety net that sits underneath kinda

the welfare state and various other organisations that are working with people who are

going through some kind of crisis often we can pick people up who fall through that net

for whatever reasons really

Q Ok and what would you say the foodbank’s main aims and objectives are – you’ve

maybe covered that a bit already but

A yes, I guess for us in York we want to be able to provide food for anyone in our city

who hits some kind of crisis where they cannot afford food so we don’t want to see

people aced with that choice of you know do I put food on my table for my kids or do I

money on the gas or electric. We want to enable people to to eat regardless of their

circumstances really

Q Ok and does the Trussell Trust, because I know there is a franchise model, if thats the

right word, the right way of putting it, does it allow for flexibility in your opinion in

doing your own thing I suppose in moving beyond a traditional giver / recipient sort of

model if that makes sense

A I think there is room [00:02:45] for some flexibility within the Trussell Trust so we

are a franchise of them so how that works from our perspective is that we have right at

the beginning, we paid a fee to the Trussell Trust in return for that we get a website, an

online system we get a whole manual on how to run a foodbank in the kind of Trussell

Trust model and a certain amount of ongoing support from a regional development

officer. They are they don’t really I think they come and do an annual audit although we

haven’t had one yet. we’ve been open for just over a year but there isn’t a huge amount

of accountability or checking up on us in terms of our systems and processes they will

come and see how we are doing and whether we need any support. So if we wanted to

stray from their model I feel like we probably could to be completely honest, I am not

sure how they would react to that if they caught wind of it but from our point of view,

actually their system is fairly tried and tested and seems to work pretty well. There are

one or two niggles that we think we would change but

101

Q ok, so you mean there’s other aspects of some foodbanks, say community food

initiatives and I know that perhaps you can just maybe speak first before we move on to

that just a little bit about where you see within the franchise model the position of

advocacy

A uh huh um its a good question. You mean advocacy on behalf of the people coming

into the foodbank ?

Q yeah

A yeah. um i think what we’ve been what we’ve tried to be clear on from the outset with

the foodbank here in York is we are very much a bunch of volunteers who are giving

food to people. We when it comes to offering specialist advice or um advocacy or you

know kind of someone needing more intensive support then that’s where we have to

rely on other agencies [00:05:08] um so we I kind of sometimes I think we should be

upskilling our volunteers a little bit just to provide them with a bit more skills to offer in

terms of that support but the reality is we they are volunteers from a wide range of

backgrounds with a wide range of motivations for getting involved in it and they are not

professional advisers. One of the I think one of the advantages of the Trussell Trust

model is that because vouchers are held by professionals and not by us it means that

someone coming to us always comes via a professional or some kind of agency and

estimate I don’t actually have an actual statistic for it but I would estimate that at least 9

out of 10 people coming to us are already having their underlying issue crisis whatever,

it is looked at supported, resolved by somebody else by the agency that sends them and

they are just coming to us for food to kind of see them through that crisis. There are a

small percentage of people they have either come from an agency who can’t offer that

support to them and they’ve just given them the voucher and that’s where we would

tend to try and signpost people to other agencies but like I said that’s where we rely on

other agencies for that kind of thing

Q ok um that perhaps there is a question further down the line I shall perhaps just use

because it follows on actually um in discussing things with other people. One critique of

the voucher model is that there are some agencies and I think it is fair to say that they

are hopefully small amount that use the voucher model to shall we say, I don’t want to

say it quite so bluntly as this, get rid of some say problem clients and move them out of

their environment. Is that something that you’ve experienced at all

A yeh we um the model is certainly open to that kind of abuse. We have to rely on the

agencies who have vouchers giving them out in good faith and so we try to minimise

that by say in several different ways. So one would be whoever is giving out the

vouchers I would personally try to where possible get along to a team meeting so I can

explain fully the foodbank way that kind of thing. It doesn’t always necessarily manage

to do that and sometimes we just train a couple of staff members who then will train

others so that’s one of the ways we kind of combat that one some of the other ways we

tend to we monitor our system to see who’s giving out how many vouchers .We can tell

how many vouchers have been redeemed so they if someone orders more vouchers

from us and our system is says actually. There’s one agency we were working with

where it turned out that they ordered over a period of time so many vouchers I cant

remember how many but only 50% of those had actually been brought in to be

102

exchanged for food. So we sat down we went and approached this agency they were

quite shocked by this but we basically we gave them a final warning. To us this

translates as you’re giving them to people who don’t need food, that’s our assumption

because what other reason once someone had been given this its worth quite a lot of

money in terms of food value why would they not, I mean every agency has a certain

percentage who don’t come for whatever reasons but this was a really high percentage

so we kind of said you need to review your policy of giving out these vouchers. If you

don’t we are just going to stop you having vouchers so it is open to that kind of abuse we

try and minimise it and monitor it yeah

Q Ok just speaking on advocacy in a sort of in a broader sense in terms of actually, I

don’t whether you would call it social policy or political with a small p what sort of work

do you do on that and how important do you see that role as part of the franchise

A uh huh I for me I thinks that vital. I think we have to feed people but we have to speak

up on behalf of these people who whatever the issues are that they are facing so for us

that works in several ways I guess. One is that we obviously collect statistics on the

reasons on why people come to the food bank. I mean currently the last time I checked

it was something like 52, 53% of people were coming because of a benefits related issue

so either a benefit delay, a benefit change um so one of one of the advantages of being

part of the Trussell Trust is that nationally they collect those statistics and try and do

kind of advocacy on a national level with ... which I think I think is great although at the

moment there appears to be some kind of the DWP seem to have kind of shut down

Trussell Trust a little bit and just aren’t really working with them which is a shame

really. But on a local level to be honest this is one of the priorities we have kind of set for

our new food bank manager who is going to taking on the role. I’ve not had a huge

amount of capacity to do this kind of thing so we are asking our new manager to make

that a focus really on a local level how do we kind of advocate on behalf of some of our

recipients? I think um some of the things we have done its fairly basic things but we’ve

tried to keep our local MP involved and up to date with statistics and the reasons why, I

approached JRF a while back to ask if they wanted to do a piece of work with us to look

at the reasons why and kind of highlighting the benefits thing and they didn’t seem that

keen on it, probably they’ve got their own things going on. Um, and I think going

forward that actually making more of a public kind of being a public voice really even if

it is only in the local media that kind of thing I guess we’ve been part of the CAB-led

Advice York partnership we're involved in that and trying to collect information from

across the city to try and do similar advocacy so I guess that’s how its worked but

definitely its an area that is important to us and is becoming a priority I think for us

Q Ok, um just a small question. In terms of outreach work, do you do any outreach work

to organisations where users might not be able to access your venues?

A [00:12:31] Yes, as part of the training with everywhere we go to kind of train people

up to have vouchers, one of things we say is that if somebody, if you are working with

somebody who cannot get to us, there are a couple of different options so the first one is

that you as their key worker can come and collect the food and take it to them um and

secondly we can if there are genuine reasons they can’t get to us we will organise for

someone to deliver food um in reality we have only had to do that a handful of times in

103

the year or so we’ve done it. Its, I would say, a good probably 10% of food vouchers are

professionals coming in and collecting it and taking it

Q right

A so that tends to be the main way that we would you know make sure food gets to

people who cant get to us

Q yeah sure, um, and how secure are the donations and funding for the foodbank - I

know you’d mentioned about employing a full time manager which obviously costs and

so forth and so on so

A [00:13:37] yeah, we found that I think maybe because the food banks are in the public

eye at the moment that they are very much mainstream news nationally and I think

because we are new to York that people have really responded really generously so in

terms of food, um, I believe we are now more than 40 tonnes of food donated in the last,

just over a year. We’ve never run out of food in that time and its all donated by members

of the public. We currently have got about 12 tonnes of food in stock so in a really

healthy position there. I find it really helpful to be able to access supermarkets and

that’s something that Trussell Trust have actually negotiated at a national level with

supermarkets this process of being able to partner with them and hold a collection at

supermarkets. In terms of finances, again we are pretty healthy really, we’ve got enough

money or money pledged to employ somebody its a 12 month fixed term contract

initially but they will also be given responsibility for kind of ongoing fundraising really

um so we are going to get more creative with that in terms of utilising some of our

supporters and the general public in terms of funding through kind of monthly giving

but up to this point our funding has tended to come from so we’ve had two round of

funding from the Community York which is effectively local authority money but

distributed by kind of not for profit organisation called York Consortium. Weve had two

round of that for the food bank and we will apply for a third one um whether we get it

or not, who knows but that’s been the first time round that was £15000 to run the food

bank and another project it was £10 for the foodbank. The second time around we got

£15k again for the foodbank. We have had several one off donations from other kind of

other funding bodies um anywhere between probably £500 and £5000 um and

Churches actually have been really generous churches have a kind of giving as part of

their budget they will set aside a certain amount to give to other charities so we’ve some

churches regularly give say £1000 a year so yeah we’ve found it quite easy to secure

funding up to this point. We don’t know in the future but the other thing is people we

just get individuals who come and drop money off you know people come with £500 in

cash and just give it and all sorts really. I think its we kind of feel like foodbanks have

captured peoples imagination really and I think sometimes when you are giving money

to a national charity I think people worry that a lot of it will get spent on overheads and

things like that yeah especially I think that’s cos why we’ve seen a lot of food donated is

because people know food has to be given away you can spend food on your other costs

so but yeah we’ve found a real generosity really so far

Q and have you turning that hopefully into not too much of a negative, do you ever have

a situation where you have to throw food away or waste it what do you do if you get to a

situation where food is getting close to sell by dates

104

A [00:17:23] So the only food that we have thrown out and its been a substantial

amount I'd say it's now in the region of a tonne of food we have had to throw out that’s

only ever been food that um that has been given to us when its already out of date so we

get a lot of that around Harvest festivals um people go to the back of their cupboard and

what can I find to send with my child to school that kind of thing or often we get a

reasonable amount of food from people whose elderly relatives die and people clear out

their cupboards bring it in and often [a lot] of that food is out of date but we are pretty

efficient so we have a warehouse facility where all the food is sorted and if it short shelf

life it will go out immediately and if its longer shelf life it will stay in the warehouse

longer. We’ve there are some items where pure volume mean it could become an issue

but we’ve tended to actually offload that to other charities so this week were giving a

whole load of baked beans to Carecent

Q so in a situation where you get to a surplus, you tend to address by

A Yes, donating it elsewhere

Q but really the only wastage is that food isn’t ok to use

A and even some of that if its been in a tin for seven years and its a month gone past its

sell by date we technically can’t give that to people who come with a voucher but what

we do is we make that available in our sessions and we will say to people we can’t give

you this cos its out of date, you can take it if you want but it is at your own risk and we

would only do that with things that we are confident are safe it wouldn’t be a bottle of

milk two weeks gone but so yeah, very little waste in the system we had a tin of soup

from 2002, i think that was the best we’ve had so far.

Q in terms of, um, the appropriateness of food, I think that’s something that comes up

quite often, how do you feel or how nutritionally adequate or perhaps a better way of

putting is um what is the nutritional value of the food you give

A [00:19:51] yeah, so the food we give out is a set list that the Trussell Trust have

determined and I am led to believe that this was devised working with nutritionists so

um, we say the food we give out is nutritionally balanced so there is no fresh produce,

we are quite open about that fact, its all non-perishable its um but it is fairly balanced so

you get good solid kind of carbs calories in terms of pasta, rice, that kind of thing but

you also get tinned fruit, tinned vegetables um so its a fairly mixed kind of you know

diet really we some food banks do use fresh produce um up to this point we felt just

logistically we are just not ready to do that kind of thing um because there is huge

potential for wastage and if you’re dealing with fresh stuff. So we experimented this

autumn with apples and potatoes that um people had a surplus of and we just we didn’t

put them in the standard bag we just made them available to people and actually they

went down really well um so we are in conversation with some of the local kind of

growing groups about kind of moving that forward really and the agreement we have

come to and we’ve not seen anything come of it yet what we’ve said to them is that um,

if they have a surplus of food produce, if they can bring it at the beginning of a session to

us, we can make it available, offer it to people and if there is some left over at the end,

we don’t want to be throwing that out so they will need to come and take that away and

try and redistribute it elsewhere and um so that’s the agreement we’ve come to but we

105

haven’t seen any of that happen yet but its something we will continue to explore you

know. We get offered fresh things a lot to be honest and unfortunately we have had to

turn them down just from a logistical point of view often it can be frozen things or

refrigerated things which would be a considerable cost to us to try and make sure that

at each place there was refrigeration and a freezer but its one for the longer term I think

we will probably keep looking at it

Q and what about culturally appropriate food, how do you deal with that?

A [00:22:40] so we kind of deal with that on a case by case basis so when somebody

comes in, we will ask them the question. we usually get the food first and bring it over

and there’s a list of what’s in the bag that we give to everybody and we will ask them

can you look down that list and is there anything that you cant eat um and whether that

it is a dietary requirement or a cultural thing we will then kind of go and swop whatever

we can. We can’t promise to deal with cater for every single eventuality but we’ve I

think we’ve been able to cos the kind of range of food given is quite diverse anyway

there’s often things given that is not on our list so we are able to then utilise some of

those things. Interesting, I think of the interesting cultural observations i have had is

that we get very few vegetarians actually. Somebody needs to do some research into

that and whether that’s a socio-economic kind of - whether there’s a section of society

that kinds of makes moral choices like that I don’t know but we rarely get that. We do

get health-related diabetes that kind of thing and occasionally we would get somebody

from a different cultural kind of ethnicity who has requirements

Q I mean York isnt that diverse

A No its not a huge issue but we’ve had a fair few and we would try and swop them

Q Ok, and someone from Salvation Army said to me one of the problems I would be

interested to know if you’ve had the same issue some of the users are not used to

cooking that generally speaking they have bought food from Iceland that’s it pre-

packaged and if you give somebody some pasta to make up a lasagne they are stumped

really. is that something that

A [00:24:59] it does occasionally we get a few different things like that sometimes you

get someone who just doesn’t have cooking facilities um so with that we would tend to

swop everything that needs cooking for things that don’t need to be cooked and can be

eaten cold if necessary. That’s a very rare occasion when that happens, there’s a few

people who sleep rough in York and do it on an ongoing basis because that’s what they

prefer and they occasionally we’ve had one or two of those guys come in and we can

swop things. Yes, the issue of people not knowing what to do with the food, most of the

food we give out is fairly basic or basic things can be made with it um I’ve known a

handful of occasions when people have looked through the food bag and what on earth

is that how do I use that and on most occasions we will say we can swop that for

something if you want and we’ve. There was one girl I remember who you know said I

just eat ready meals I don’t know what to do with this stuff can I I can't use I can't use

that and we just took all of that stuff and brought back some stuff that she could just

heat up or heat in her microwave or whatever and I think she was happy with that so it

does happen, not all the time, but that certainly can happen yeah

106

Q alright, um, do you, yeah, I was going to say, I know that recently you’ve done some

statistics and I saw those and I noticed that it was predominantly single people who Is

that something that is in line with a national picture or is there a different demographic

A [00:26:49] No I think I couldn’t tell you for certain because I don’t get access to the

national stats unless they Trussell release them publicly but my understanding is that

um that predominantly single people access the food bank. The reason we’ve come to

that and other food banks have come to is that basically the benefit system is tightest

and harshest to single people so therefore there is more of them living right on the

breadline therefore whenever a crisis hits, immediately they haven’t got enough money

to buy food. Yeah, we think that’s a common thing across foodbanks.

Q That would be quite an interesting area to actually

A Yes it would, it would

Q Yeah, in terms of repeat clients, I know when I’ve worked in here sometimes you do

get repeat clients and I know that you have a process where you are supposed to limit it

to 3 in 6 months I think it is, is that right

A yeah that’s right

Q do you ever feel that it does create, there’s an element of dependency within the

process

A Yeah, I think there is the potential for that. Um, we, the statistic I have looked through

all our stats and did some maths around it and what we discovered is that the average

person or average person in the family or whatever or the average person coming in

that person will come on average 1.5 times to the food bank so from our perspective for

the vast majority of people it’s working in terms of, its a very short term thing, um

seeing somebody through a short term crisis they only need to come once or twice, um,

there are then a number of people who will come up to the limit of three um, and then

there are a few people who we have gone through that limit and how we work that is

that if somebody just comes to us with a voucher, we check every voucher on the way in,

and we look up their kind of details, and if they have been three times, we will turn

them away unless they unless whoever has given them the voucher has got permission

to give out a fourth one first so we have occasionally someone will ring up and say I am

working with this family they have had 3 already um but the money isn’t going to come

through till next Tuesday so they are going to need a fourth one is that ok? We will say

yes so long as there is an end in sight to the crisis, its been resolved, and that kind of

thing. I think, I would say, I think the system we have is designed to make it really

difficult to either abuse the system or become dependent um I think we didn’t have

those checks then probably we would find people who were becoming dependent on

the food bank. There are - I have to - we have to - kind of openly say if there is

somebody who is absolutely determined to cheat the food bank or whatever, there is

not a huge amount you know if they go to the extent of giving fake names and all of that

then potentially somebody could but I guess that’s where our human intelligence comes

in because same people running the sessions, you remember people as well

107

Q so just as a matter of interest, how do you deal with self-referrals, I suppose a tension

between a responsibility to the people who are giving food but also somebody who is

hungry so how would you ordinarily deal with somebody that turns up

A[00:31:05] just turns up, um, we the way we operate it that we sort out our food bank

distribution points do not have vouchers themselves. the Gateway is a bit messier than

that because there are several agencies here and several teams within that who do have

vouchers but so in general what happens is if someone comes without a voucher they

will be referred to somebody who does have a voucher so we tend to ask the question

are you working with any agencies. If they name one who have got a who hold vouchers

we will say well go an talk to your key worker there and they we can’t promise they will

give you one but ask them because we prefer people to be referred by somebody who is

working with them on an ongoing basis obviously. In terms of if somebody isn't working

with any agencies and occasionally somebody will drop an email to the foodbank email

address whatever saying these are my circumstances I’ve got no food what can I do and

we will always say we can’t give you food unless you have a voucher, you will need to

get a voucher from and well if they are not working with an agency we will name the

agencies who operate on a drop in basis who they can get to. So we tend to do that. How

we work here at gateway is slightly differently in that um if somebody comes to us

without a voucher we have teams of people who can if they are around can sit down

with somebody and they will go through a process with them, establishing whether they

are genuinely in need, if there are any additional support they need, it tends to be CAP

who do money advice stuff anyway so that tends to be how it works. We wouldn’t ever

we don’t ever give out food to people who just turn up without a voucher, that’s the

kinda bottom line really.

Q Ok, nearly there at the end, how do you deal with referrals from what I call the State.

So you’ve got 2 levels of the state you’ve got the DWP, JC+, and then you’ve got the local

authority and their welfare assistance scheme.

A. [00:33:25] Yeah, yeah, yeah. um, that’s a really good question. Thats something that

we wrestle with to be honest. um, and er, I am assuming, I don’t know how candid I can

be really,

Q you can be as candid as, this is totally anonymous, totally confidential,

A`[00:33:44] yeah, so we, um, from the right from the off, we said we were not going to

give vouchers from the DWP um and the Jobcentre. Because we basically, we felt like

um, for people that were making that decision of I'm going to sanction you, I'm going to

stop your money, I'm going to give you your money, for them to have vouchers in the

background, we felt that could influence their decisions. And you know, we didn't want

to make it easy for them to be able to go 'Well I will sanction that person, I'll just give

them a voucher'. So they um approached us and wanted vouchers and we said no. Um,

we, we with hindsight, I would have done the same thing with the Financial Assistance

Scheme. However, I at the time we trained them, it was with a couple of other council

teams, and they kind of snook in under the radar, and had already got vouchers before I

had fully understood what their service was. Once I realised that, I did have a sit down

with them and chatted to the manager there and we came to an agreement where they

would, one of the other things is that they were doing in summer was that they were

108

giving people £35 on a card plus a voucher um and we said you cant do that, that’s not

what the food bank is for, you’ve got your own pot of money you use that for people

who come to you the only we agreed that only refer people to us if they didn’t qualify for

their assistance basically and we’ve since we had that conversation with them, their

referrals have gone done hugely actually so they have stopped, they were actually the

people who 50% were not

Q Oh I see I see

A that team, so we’ve seen that kind of reduce and I’ve I’m reasonably comfortable with

that. Its one of the things we are monitoring and having this discussion and it is one of

the things that the trustees of the food bank really need to decide on really. Where do

we fit in terms of the welfare state and you know, on a local and national level and er, I

am fairly comfortable with where we sit currently with that. I think that the thing that

annoys me is that the FAS is not very well advertised so I suspect that a lot of people

coming to us would qualify for that but just don’t know about it so

Q what about a partner, for instance, do you talk about that with partner agencies to say

that actually do you think actually maybe the Assistance scheme may be your first port

of call rather than

A so its really interesting whenever I go and train up a team to give out vouchers, I now

give a little plugs for the Financial Assistance Scheme and what’s fascinating is that a lot

even local authority teams in Children’s Centres, health visitors and all of the rest of it,

they don’t know it exists. Some of them do. I was at one meeting where there was maybe

five different Children’s Centres represented and I said, before I finish I just want to, Are

you aware of the Financial Assistance Scheme and I think there was like one of them

said, 'Yeah, I use that actually. I send people. And the others are all like 'What on earth is

that? I’ve never heard of it'. So I was saying, 'Well this is how it works and really they

should be pre-food bank. I think there are a few challenges with it. One is that I feel like

its, I feel like its very easy to refer somebody to the food bank which is a good thing,

which means that somebody can get food quickly, but what it also means is that it is

really the easier option, um, to sending somebody down to say YFAS or whatever, um,

so I suspect that probably does happen, um, I don’t know what the solution is to that. I

know they have got a big underspend and money may get cut because they are not using

it so I am trying to advertise it wherever I go um but yeah, that is one of the challenges

really, its part of the bigger question, where we do we fit in terms of the Welfare State

cos in some ways 'is there anything wrong with you know the food bank taking on some

of the responsibility that the Welfare State has traditionally had, you know, for the past

few decades, because before that, it was the charity sector who did all of the, they were

the Welfare State, so you know, where, and I kind of you know in the big bigger picture I

feel like it probably the pendulum swung from the kind of the charity sector,

predominantly the church really were the Welfare State, and it swung all the way over

to the state does everything, absolutely everything, has a legal responsibility for people

and you know, if you are in a crisis, they are there to help. And I feel like maybe that

pendulum is starting to swing a little bit further and you know whether that’s because

of a political ideology or a pure practical 'we haven’t got enough money to do that', I

don’t know, um, but I, you know, I kind of feel, you know, if we are saving tax payers

money on a local people by doing some of the work that YFAS might have been doing,

109

then maybe we are doing everybody a favour cos people are giving willingly to the

foodbank um but on the other hand, how would people feel like if they knew people

were using the foodbank when the state could have been providing for them, I think,

that’s probably a concern people would have. So its an ongoing wrestle for us really, of

where we fit, and I think to be honest cos food banks are only recently been big news,

those questions are probably to starting to get asked and over time we will work out

where we really fit. I think it will take a while

Q cos I was going to say actually, and this probably my final question, um, if you look at

other countries, I think you would see that some food banks in Canada and States

particularly um sort of don’t, there has been an element of donor fatigue, and also

associated with increased dependency so for instance in Canada recently there’s a sort

of move to monthly paying the benefits and so food banks have a peak every month

where people you know are running out of money. Is there any patterns that you’ve

noticed over the last year um and if so what do you attribute to and what do you see

food bank if anything developing into in the future

A [00:41:30] er, great questions. I think in terms of patterns, its very difficult for us to

see, did the benefits change impact on us, its really difficult for us to say definitively if

that did or not for us because we only started in November last year and we started

small intentionally we only trained up a few agencies to give out vouchers so naturally

we have a growth from the start, our numbers definitely carried on growing in April, um

we heat a peak in August interestingly um, August was our busiest month to date, we

did 180 vouchers in the month of August. Since then, we have seen it drop off, in

September I think we were down to 140/150, and then November, December, we

were at 115/120 so we don’t know the factors behind that were. One of the theories

behind that is that in Summer you have a whole load of families trying to feed their kids

who would normally get free school meals that’s one theory. I am not sure its that

simple, I think part of it is that YFAS were giving out a shed loads of vouchers and it was

the end of summer that we spoke to them and they stopped, I mean it maybe something

that simple. I mean, so we it difficult I don’t think we see a trend in terms of within a

month, within weeks we get busier days but I think just the nature of when and were we

are open so Fridays tend to be our busier day so we have two centres open and yeah, so

its difficult to know, to identify any trends as such. We in terms of the future food banks,

I part of me, maybe its far too simplistic, but the fact that 50% of the people coming us

are related to a benefits related issue, if the benefits system sorted itself out, or those in

charge of it sorted it out, we would be feeding half as many people as we currently are,

that’s the reality. If they stopped sanctioning people, if they stopped all the delays in the

system, and stopped trying to move people from one benefit to another, you know all of

that, if they sorted all that out, then in theory we would be feeding half as many people. I

think, we keep on saying, the dream for us as a food bank, is that in five years time, we

don’t exist, um and I think our hope is that we do everything we can to make that

happen, I suspect there are so many factors beyond our control that I suspect we

probably will still exist, um, I think for me I its a really tricky one, we are a crisis, we’re

for people who hit a crisis, we are a kind of one-off thing and then the vast majority of

people come once and we never see them again. That tends to be how it works so that’s

every little long term impact we can have on people like that. I think I’ve always kind of

clung to this kind of theory transformation comes through relationship really um so

people aren’t peoples lives don’t get turned around by sitting opposite somebody at a JC,

110

because there’s no relationship there, to be honest that’s one of my criticisms of the

whole model of the Welfare State doing everything. Its there’s no relationship whereas

through our work here at CAP, through the foodbank to an extent although were fairly

kind of early into that, like we run a cafe down here where we get people on work

placements so people have to, to get their benefits, they have to come and volunteer a

certain amount of hours a week, what we find is that they it’s incredible really the vast

majority of them finish their work placement and carry on volunteering here because

they enjoy, kind of enjoy, they enjoy being productive but they enjoy working alongside

people and it connects them in and at the end of the day it they are building

relationships with people that’s what kind of starts. There was one guy who came

whose first day here was like 'Oh I am David Cameron's working boy, I’m only here

because I have to, and now he is still coming even though he doesn’t have to and he’s

helping and he’s loving it and I kind of feel like that’s what the Welfare State misses

really. People who have actually come alongside people [00:46:43] and get to know

them and support them. And I guess our aim with all the stuff we do here at gateway is

it’s not just kind of we are not just handing help out to people we are coming alongside

them trying to support them we are looking at another project to start up called Jobclub

which is just trying to help some of the people who are coming to our cafe and helping

find kind of employment and support them into that. Um, but we and I kind of feel like

with the food banks that’s what we need to be thinking about really is how we how do

we come alongside people and make it more than just a sit down give people some food

and never see them again um I mean for some people it is already more than that some

people will come and sit down for 45 minutes and they will tell you their whole life

story and the volunteers will just and listen and offer them a listening ear and a bit of

basic encouragement um and I think that’s helpful. I kind of feel like we as a foodbank

need to be doing more of that and less kind of come and get your food and go not that,

we kind of intentionally from the outset said that our foodbank we didn’t want it to be

like that in other cities it is apparently in Liverpool you just turn up get your food and go

i think in an inner city you’ve probably got more challenges a big big city cos you’ve got

so many people whereas In York weve got a lot of volunteers we can offer them our

time so yeah, I feel like probably in the future that’s where we there are other projects

we I had read about this Canadian foodbank where they pretty much run a farm where

people come I think its on the Guardian website where people they’re offered food but

also they are offered to come back volunteer and will get more fresh food because of

that Id love to do that if anyone has got a farm to - laughter - we don’t necessarily have

the space for that kind of thing, we probably need to get creative in terms and working

alongside other agencies who will help people who are kind of long term out of work

who are relying on the benefits system not that they are always the people who come to

the food bank at all but that is a section of people who are probably the ones who are

going to be tempted to come back again and again. And if we can do something about

coming alongside them, supporting them, then I think that would be yeah, success

111

APPENDIX G - Dissemination

Having written two articles for a local magazine and a national faith-based publication, I

have also been approached by my local MP (see letter) to provide information on

emergency food. I intend to make a submission to the inquired conducted by the All

Party Parliamentary Group on Hunger and Poverty (see email).

The organisations in which the research was conducted – and the local authorities –

have similarly requested I provide them with a report on the findings.

I have been asked to provide findings to Emma Stone, Director of Policy and Research at

Joseph Rowntree Foundation and intend to do the same to Child Poverty Action Group,

Salvation Army, Trussell Trust, Fareshare, Real Aid as well as regional media.

112

113

Para além da alimentação: Iniciativas de apoio alimentar, atores e dinâmicas

Thesis

Full-text available

Mar 2023

Fábio Rafael Augusto

O lugar ocupado pelas iniciativas de apoio alimentar, no contexto das sociedades ocidentais modernas, encontra-se envolto em indefinições. O desenvolvimento deste tipo de iniciativas tem gerado múltiplos debates, dentro e fora do espaço académico, acerca do que elas representam ou deveriam (idealmente) representar. Considera-se que um elemento central e transversal às diferentes perspetivas em torno destas organizações, relaciona-se com a referência ao seu papel social. Este constitui, justamente, o foco da presente pesquisa: compreender e analisar o papel social desempenhado pelas iniciativas de apoio alimentar, recorrendo, para tal, às perspetivas dos seus atores (responsáveis, voluntários e beneficiários). Estas respostas controversas e contestadas têm vindo a ser analisadas à luz de quadros teóricos que se consideram ser restritivos, na medida em que promovem leituras circulares e fechadas. Além disso, denota-se, sobretudo no contexto nacional uma quase completa ausência de estudos sobre estas iniciativas. Escasseiam, assim, análises sobre a heterogeneidade que caracteriza o universo sobre a ajuda alimentar, sobre os seus atores e sobre as dinâmicas entre ambos. Com o intuito de mitigar estas questões, a presente pesquisa avança com uma estratégia metodológica qualitativa comparativa de carácter etnográfico institucional para explorar a perspetiva de atores chave inseridos em diferentes modelos de ajuda alimentar - Organização de Redistribuição de Alimentos (ORA), Cantina Social e Mercearia Social. A análise e interpretação dos dados através de um quadro teórico inovador (lente crítica do cuidar) conduziu a descobertas que rompem e desafiam as narrativas dominantes em torno das iniciativas de apoio alimentar. Os principais resultados apontam, por um lado, para a existência de múltiplas práticas de cuidado ‘veladas’ e ‘improvisadas’ nas iniciativas investigadas que vão para além das questões alimentares e, por outro lado, para a constatação de que as mesmas podem assentar em atos altruístas e/ou constituir um mecanismo compensatório face a um serviço prestado que é entendido, pelos seus próprios atores, como sendo insuficiente. São ainda avançadas algumas reflexões e recomendações, tanto a nível da investigação como em termos de políticas públicas e intervenção social.

From Welfare State to Welfare Society: a critical discourse of post-2010 social security policy

Thesis

Full-text available

Aug 2016

Richard Bridge

This thesis examines a sample of policy texts (speeches and texts) through a Critical Discourse Analysis underpinned by Bacchi's 'What is the Problem Represented to be' (WPR) approach to uncover the underlying problematisations that lie behind social security policy post-2010.

Understanding Theories and Concepts in Social Policy

Book

Feb 2024

Agency, ‘dependency’ and welfare: beyond issues of claim and contribution?

Chapter

Mar 2004

Peter Dwyer

Activating the Unemployed: the street-level implementation of UK policy

Chapter

Feb 2002

Sharon Wright

Understanding Human Need

Book

Apr 2020

Hartley Dean

Childhood Poverty and Social Exclusion: From a Child's Perspective

Book

Oct 2002

Tess Ridge

i>Childhood Poverty and Social Exclusion offers a rare and valuable opportunity to understand the issues and concerns that low-income children themselves identify as important. Using child-centred research methods to explore children's own accounts of their lives, this original book raises critical issues for both policy and practice.

Should Norway Ratify the Optional Protocol to the ICESCR? - That Is the Question

Article

Jun 2009

Stein Evju

Citizenship and Social Class

Book

Jan 1992

One-dimensional man: studies in the ideology of advanced industrial society

Book

Jan 1964

Herbert Marcuse

Combining aspects of Marxist theory, the Frankfurt School, French social theory, and American social science, Marcuse outlines a theory of advanced industrial society in which changes in production, consumption, and culture combine to create a technological society in which thought and labor is restructured in such a way that perpetuates domination and dehumanization. Marcuse argues that this leads to an oversimiplified culture that he refers to as a "one-dimensional society." Reason is used as a method of control in this society. Marcuse outlines simultaneous tensions in society: 1) advanced industrial society is capable of containing qualitative change and 2) forces exist which can break this containment and explode the society.

Don’t Look Back? Voluntary and charitable finance of hospitals in Britain, past and present

Book

Jan 2001

This book provides a reassessment of the role of charitable and voluntary fundraising for health care, with a particular focus on the hospital. It does so firstly by summarising the principal findings of a major research project on the pre-National Health Service (NHS) voluntary hospitals. Independent of the state and funded initially by charitable gifts, these hospitals cared for the acute sick before 1948 and were the centres of research and teaching. We discuss their performance, and that of the voluntary system, in its last decades. Secondly we explore contemporary trends in charitable fundraising, examining its extent and impact. The key elements of the book are the following: 1. A review of proposals for a greater role for the voluntary sector in the provision of welfare services. Discussion of this issue has emanated from several positions on the political spectrum, and ranges from a desire to roll back the frontiers of the state, to a concern to revive participation in the institutions of civil society. 2. A reassessment of the record of voluntary hospital provision before the NHS, and of the role of charity since 1948. The findings are organised around four central themes: ? Charitable finance: Although the inter-war years were a time of expansion, this was also the period in which the funding of voluntary hospitals was transformed. Traditional philanthropy proved insufficient and gave way to private payment and a shift to mass contributory arrangements. However, the late 1930s saw financial crisis looming, as current account deficits multiplied and the asset base of many institutions was eroded. The revival of charity in the 1990s has posed a rather different problem: the unpredictability of charitable finance (rather than its inadequacy, since charity is not being relied upon to provide core services). ? Provision and utilisation: The spontaneous and localist aspects of voluntary action led to the uneven development of hospital provision. The result was that well before the ‘postcode rationing’ identified with the NHS access to care was inequitable, since it was shaped by residence. Under the NHS it has been large urban hospitals, particularly those with a glamorous national and international reputation, that have attracted the bulk of charitable funds. The tendency for charity to enhance regional variations and hence inequities has therefore persisted. The pattern of charitable endowments and income remains dominated by a very limited number of institutions, mainly located in London. ? Co-ordination and planning: Improvements in the quality and availability of hospital care depended on collaboration and partnership, both with the public sector and with other voluntary institutions. However, the traditional independence of the voluntary hospitals impeded this process and despite some promising initiatives in particular localities there was still no co-ordinated hospital system by 1939. In recent years the revival of charitable giving has proven to be inimical to planning. The local enthusiasms underpinning voluntary support for individual institutions can conflict with proposals to rationalise provision in order to achieve wider regional or national strategic objectives. ? Democracy and participation: Openness, subscriber democracy and accountability were attributes of the voluntary hospital from its inception, though participation was initially limited to wealthy middle-class contributors. The transition to mass contribution in the early 20th century strengthened popular support for the institutions, though leadership remained in the hands of traditional elites. There are some parallels here with the situation under the NHS. Although community support of health services is widely encouraged, NHS services are largely run by organisations which have little direct input from those who make considerable commitments to raise money for their local facilities. 3. A concluding assessment of the extent to which the issues posed by the uneven development of charity remain with us today, as a consequence of the recent expansion of charitable fundraising. The parallels are not exact but are nonetheless instructive. We end with a review of some potential policy options for striking a balance between charitable provision and social need.

Shame and the social bond: A sociological theory

Article

Mar 2000

Thomas J. Scheff

Emotion has long been recognized in sociology as crucially important, but most references to it are generalized and vague. In this essay, I nominate shame, specifically, as the premier social emotion. First I review the individualized treatment of shame in psychoanalysis and psychology, and the absence of social context. Then I consider the contributions to the social dimensions of shame by six sociologists (Georg Simmel, Charles Cooley, Norbert Elias, Richard Sennett, Helen Lynd, Erving Goffman) and a psychologist/psychoanalyst (Helen Lewis). I show that Cooley and Lynd, particularly, made contributions to a theory of shame and the social bond. Lewis's idea that shame arises from threats to the bond integrates the contributions of all six sociologists, and points toward future research on emotion, conflict, and alienation/integration.

The institutionalisation of emergency food provision: a danger to the social safety-net?

Abstract

Recommended publications

Food banks and food rescue organisations: Damned if they do; damned if they don’t

Food poverty and food charity in the United Kingdom

The rise of food charity: issues and challenges

Like a stone thrown into a pond – poverty contrast of an emporium of solidarity