In Wales, as across the UK, we’ve seen a deeply worrying rise in the numbers of people facing severe hardship in recent years. More and more people face hunger because they simply can’t afford the essentials we all need. This deepening hardship has been especially concentrated among families with children. Shockingly, around a quarter of families with children in Wales face hunger – that’s three times as high as the rate for families without children (24% vs 8%).
Food banks across Wales have been under immense pressure as they try to support families with emergency food and practical help to tackle the drivers of their situation. Last year, 154,000 emergency food parcels were provided by food banks in the Trussell community in Wales.
People are forced to turn to food banks because they don’t have enough money for the essentials. Some are between jobs, have health conditions, or are looking after relatives and children. Some are in work that’s insecure, inaccessible, or doesn’t pay enough to live on. And the lack of affordable housing, transport and childcare cut people off from opportunities to increase their income.
However, one concern for us is the worrying trend of charitable food provision becoming normalised in communities across Wales, both food banks and other forms of charitable food provision like food pantries, social supermarkets, affordable food clubs and community fridges. All these types of support can provide a short-term lifeline, but they are not the solution. The evidence is clear that free or subsidised food is not the best form of crisis support and often do not embed preventative approaches that build financial resilience in our communities.
It’s vital the next Welsh Government makes an explicit commitment to ending the need for food banks in Wales and sets out an action plan to not just meet immediate needs in the here and now but to tackle the underlying drivers of hunger and hardship.
That plan should include these 10 steps:
1. Maximise the effectiveness of ‘Food poverty funding’. Ensure funding to local authorities and food partnerships aimed at reducing ‘food poverty’ is focused on tackling the local drivers of need for emergency food.
2. Cash-first crisis support. Ensure support through the Discretionary Assistance Fund is adequate for people to cover the essentials and, at a minimum, is increased in line with inflation. And that everyone applying for the Discretionary Assistance Fund is offered funded advice and support.
3. Scope options to implement a ‘Welsh Child Payment’, learning from Scotland, with clear intent to roll out the scheme across Wales.
4. Increase access to Free School Meals for children whose families are in receipt of Universal Credit, and all children with No Recourse to Public Funds from households on or below levels of income comparable with Universal Credit.
5. Boost childcare support for families on low incomes with young children and end the ‘postcode lottery’ of childcare support.
6. Improve the quality, safety, and availability of temporary accommodation, with better guidance and legislation to ensure people are safe and have access to cooking facilities, places to store food, laundry facilities & Wi-Fi.
7. Reduce the number of people in temporary accommodation, and those struggling to afford rents in the private sector, through a clear plan to significantly increase the number of social homes in Wales.
8. Support and increase funding to ensure advice services are reaching people at highest risk of hunger and hardship. We have seen in food banks that providing high quality advice on debt, benefits, housing and other issues can be transformative. But too many people struggle to access advice at the right time.
9. Embed the Welsh Benefits Charter across Wales, ensuring all local authorities prioritise increasing and simplifying access to Welsh benefits.
10. Call on the UK government to unfreeze Local Housing Allowance and take further steps towards establishing an Essentials Guarantee so that Universal Credit at least covers the cost of essentials.
Helen Barnard was one of our guest speakers at our webinar Turning the tide on child poverty, part of our series Ways forward: Insights and evidence for the next Welsh Government hosted by the Institute of Welsh Affairs.
