Food poverty in the UK is a serious problem and Nottingham is no exception. Sophie Thomas visits Bestwood and Bulwell Foodbank to get an insight into the reality some people in Nottingham are facing.
It is a December afternoon and Michael Wood, 44, from Aspley is at the food bank today with his 2-year-old daughter. This is his first time here and he is visibly upset as he speaks.
“It’s hard, if it wasn’t for places like this I would be starving because I would sooner let the kids eat then me.”
Michael recently separated from his wife and is looking after four of their children by himself. He is trying to change the benefits they received into his name but it is taking a while. In the meantime he is running out of money to support his family.
Another person who arrives at the food bank is Courage Makedenge, 33, from Bulwell. He is married with a son and daughter and this is his third time here in two weeks.
The family currently have no income as Courage is in full-time education, studying nursing. His wife has had to take time out from her job as a care assistant to recover from a gallbladder operation.
“I am here because I am struggling. I don’t know what else I could have done without the food bank”, he says.
Set up in September 2012 by the Trussell Trust, the Bestwood and Bulwell Foodbank at St Phillip Church on Knights close, Top Valley has around 50 volunteers and last year it gave out 25 tonnes of food. One of the volunteers, 40-year-old Lisa Maddison, from Wollaton says working here is a grounding experience.
“You come here and you really don’t have any issues or any difficulties in comparison to some of the people you see.”
Lisa Maddison, volunteer at Bestwood and Bulwell Foodbank.
Listen to more of Lisa talking about what is like volunteering at the food bank.
“The most upsetting thing is when you get people coming here for the first time they are in tears quite regularly”, she says.
But Lisa is concerned about the amount of people who are now relying on food banks.
“It’s becoming part of normality that’s not what they should be. They weren’t set up to be a permanent thing”, she says.
Manager of the food bank Nigel Webster, 48, says: “People come to us because they are in crisis we are not about long term support.”
Closing down
Another food bank in Nottingham, NG7 food bank, closed on December 19 in protest at what they felt was the local council relying too heavily on them to help people in need.
It had fed more than 5,000 people since it opened two and a half years ago and had 45 volunteers.
Nigel Webster thinks the organisers of the NG7 food bank made some valid points but that it’s central government that needs to be looked at.
“It’s a question we have to keep asking ourselves, the fact that we are here do we enable parts of the social security system to be withdrawn.”
Nigel Webster, manager of Bestwood and Bulwell Foodbank.
He says that at the food bank the volunteers spend time with people to understand why they have ended up here and signpost them to help.
A total of six people, including two social workers on behalf of the families they work with, came to the Bestwood and Bulwell Foodbank today. They were given emergency food that will last them and their families for three days. But Nigel says that there have been days when they have fed around 30 people.
Benefit delays
A report by the All-Party Parliamentary Inquiry into Hunger in the UK published on December 8 found that almost half of food bank users are there because of a delay in their benefits.
Lucy Collier, 31, a social worker in Ashfield sees this problem happening regularly: “Benefits get instantaneously cut and families are then left with nothing overnight.”
“I go on a home visit and find that a family has no gas, no electric, no nappies, no food and a service like this is invaluable”, she says.
One of the report’s recommendations to tackle food poverty is the creation of a new national network called Feeding Britain that would coordinate the work of food banks and other voluntary organisations and charities.
But Nigel Webster of the Bestwood and Bulwell Foodbank thinks this would be a big mistake and that the government should be working at food banks disappearing.
“If food banks become too much a part of a society they will never disappear and we end up in a situation where we rely on charities to live,” he says.
