With new figures revealing the extent of child poverty in Wales and food prices still rising at almost twenty percent, it is clear that the so called Cost Of living Crisis is having a devestating impact. Ka Long Tung visited one food charity in Cardiff that is struggling to meet soaring demand.
By Ka Long Tung. Cover Image, Brian Welbourn now relies on free food parcels due to the rising cost of food, by Ka Long Tung.
Holding a walking stick with his trolley, Brian Welbourn is getting food to stock up, but it is not from a place he is used to visiting.
Instead he is here at St. Marks Church in Gabalfa, Cardiff, out of necessity. It’s a charity that distributes free food to people in need, and Brian, who is disabled, can no longer afford groceries with his meagre universal credit payments.
“I remember when years ago, about just before Covid, I could take out £50, come back full like this [a trolley] and two shopping bags. Now £50 won’t even fill [a trolley],” he says.
Although the CPI inflation rate in the UK fell slightly in April, it was still at a high of 8.7%. But this masked the rate of food inflation which stood at a staggering 19.1%.
People like Brian are paying the price of this increase.
On a typical Saturday morning outside St. Marks Church, a queue of dozens is seen waiting to feed themselves and often their family too.
The church now serves 160 to 200 households a week, compared to 50 when they were first set up 3 years ago, at the beginning of the first Covid lockdown.
Volunteers here collect reduced, yellow stickered items from supermarkets and distribute them every Tuesday and Saturday to anyone who comes to collect them.
But now they face a difficulty as less of the discounted food from supermarkets comes through whilst the number of people in need keeps rising.
As a result, they have been forced to reach out to more shops in order to meet demand.
“We now receive maybe a third to a quarter of the quantity of food that we were getting a year ago. So that means that the number of stores that we get help from has had to increase,” says Della Nelson, who organises the free market at St. Marks Church.
St Marks Church in Gabalfa distributes free food to anyone who shows up. Photos by Ka Long Tung.
Della suspects that because more people are picking up discounted yellow stickered items in supermarkets, the church has now got fewer donations from each shop.
The irony is that whilst they are giving away less food to people facing hunger, supermarkets have also been accused of raising prices in order to increase profits, meaning people like Brian are forced to rely on food parcels.
Considering also the increase in energy bills, the church crowdfunded in March to keep the operation going.
Della says it will be able to sustain the free market for about eight months more, as they now have to buy more food in addition to the donations they receive.
Organisations like St. Marks Church are not food banks. The latter requires people to have a food voucher to exchange for food. Whereas the procedure and threshold for charities vary – St Marks Church distributes food to everyone and anyone who comes to their door.
But everywhere is seeing a surge in demand.
The Trussell Trust – the organisation that operates most of the food banks in the UK – distributed 185,320 emergency parcels in Wales between April 2022 and March 2023. It was the most parcels that have ever been distributed in a year.
Among those who received food from Trussell Trust food banks, more than 56,000 used the service for the first time.
Over 100 miles west of Cardiff, In Milford Haven, a similar crisis is unfolding. The Third Place is a charity and debt counselling service. Workers there say they had previously only helped those who were homeless, on very low-incomes or on benefits. But recently they’ve been seeing people who wouldn’t normally seek help.
“The big change I’ve noticed is the nature of the people being affected,” says Naomi Joseph from The Third Place.
“So before, we were basically a poverty charity, so really working with homeless people, rough sleepers, people with very know incomes, benefits, and people struggling with mental health as well,”
“Now, working people are being affected.”
She recalls one family that they’ve been helping over their mortgage payments and food.
“They’re working, they’ve never had to use a food bank or seek help. And now they’re really struggling to make ends meet,” says Naomi.
The Third Place refers cases to their head office in Bradford, but Naomi has found that the service is creaking under pressure. “Issues are getting more complex, the process is slower just because of the significant increase in demand for the service,” she says.
In April, 433,000 people in Wales received a one off, means-tested £301 cost of living payment, as part of a UK Government scheme. This was after the same government cut Universal Credit by over £1,000 a year at the end of 2021, just as brutal inflation was about to begin.
200,000 people have also claimed the Welsh Government’s Discretionary Assistance Fund in 2022-23, which awards one off emergency payments to the value of £56 for a one person household, or £111 for a three person household.
£23 million has been given out in the scheme, with a further £18.8 million made available in March.
To put the total figure of £41.8million into perspective, it is less than one twelfth of the £516million paid out to shareholders at just one of Britain’s major supermarkets this year. This staggering level of wealth inequality is having a terrible impact.
According to a report on child poverty published earlier this month, 27.9% of children in Wales were living in poverty in 2021/22.
Blaenau Gwent and Ceredigion saw the worst child poverty in Wales, with rates of 30.3% and 30.0% respectively.
“The picture of child poverty in Wales now is as bleak as it’s been for a long, long time, really,” says Dr Steffan Evans from Bevan Foundation, who jointly commissioned the report.
“We’re looking at the areas where child poverty rates are highest, there are areas that Blaenau Gwent and Ceredigion, two very different areas where three in 10 children are living in poverty, which shows that child poverty is a problem in all our communities,” says Steffan.
What is more alarming is that the report does not yet include the impact of the cost of living crisis.
“What we suspect is these children living in poverty will be the ones hit hardest. They’re the ones whose families are going to be struggling the most to afford food, heating, etc,” says Steffan.
“And we also think that there’s likely to be more children and their families finding life difficult.”
“I think it’s just incredibly sad to learn that so many children and young people are living in poverty when the UK is one of the richest countries in the world,” Rocio Cifuentes, the Children’s Commissioner for Wales, says.
Cifuentes believes that childhood shouldn’t be a time that financial pressures negatively affect young people’s mental health.
Yet, a survey of 7873 children and young people carried out by Ciefuentes’ team last year found that 61% of children aged 7-11 worried about their families not having enough money for the things they need, as did 52% of children aged 12-18.
“They were telling me that they worried a lot about having enough money to buy basic things like food,” she says. “[They were] worrying about their families having enough money. They worried about their peers in school that they could see didn’t have enough money to buy lunch.”
Last month, the Welsh government pledged that the vast majority of years three and four pupils would receive free school meals from September, in addition to younger pupils who now receive the provision. This is part of a roll out of free lunch meals to all primary age children in Wales, agreed as part of the cooperation deal with Plaid Cymru and after anti-poverty campaigners forced the issue.
Previously, the Welsh government had a target to eradicate child poverty by 2020, but scrapped it in 2016. Cifuentes argues that reintroducing the target is essential to bring about changes.
“Targets would enable that greater focus on this issue, and would increase and enable accountability of their progress towards this issue,” she says.
“[Child poverty] is an issue that we can’t just say it’s not the responsibility of the Welsh government’s, it is the responsibility of the Welsh government.”
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