Trussell Trust Research Articles

Hunger Bonds: Boundaries and Bridges in the Charitable Food Provision Field

Building on a field perspective, this article adopts a relational approach that lets us make sense of food charities’ interconnections, relationships and social positioning. I analyse how food charities working with different models of provision do boundary work and resolve the cognitive dissonance arising from simultaneously competing and collaborating. Making use of several semi-structured interviews, I illustrate how Trussell Trust food banks, independent food banks and pantries’ directors mark symbolic boundaries when illustrating their models of provision vis-a-vis other models (e.g. pantries vs food banks) but build symbolic bridges when discussing the ultimate ends of charitable food provision. This strategy lets them resolve the tension arising from two contradictory stances and is representative of what I call ‘hunger bonds’: relationships of cooperation and mutual help that also permit positional returns to be obtained and strategically advance a specific vision of the field order.

The cost-of-living crisis, poverty, and child maltreatment

Over 30% of children in England live in poverty.1 According to the Governor of the Bank of England, this figure is likely to worsen, as the current cost-of-living crisis impedes families from being able to buy essential items. For example, 2·6 million children were food insecure in April, 2022,2 and the Trussell Trust supplied over 2 million emergency food packages to families between April 1, 2021, and March 31, 2022.3 The Resolution Foundation anticipates that a further 500 000 children in the UK will fall below the UK poverty line by 2023.

Understanding the post-2010 increase in food bank use in England: new quasi-experimental analysis of the role of welfare policy

BackgroundThe number of food banks (charitable outlets of emergency food parcels) and the volume of food distributed by them increased multi-fold in the United Kingdom (UK) since 2010. The overwhelming majority of users of food banks are severely food insecure. Since food insecurity implies a nutritionally inadequate diet, and poor dietary intake has been linked to a number of diseases and chronic conditions, the rise in the number of people using food banks is a phenomenon of significant importance for public health. However, there is a shortage of robust, causal statistical analyses of drivers of food bank use, hindering social and political action on alleviating severe food insecurity.MethodsA panel dataset of 325 local authorities in England was constructed, spanning 9 years (2011/12–2019/20). The dataset included information about the volume of parcels and the number of food banks in the Trussell Trust network, as well as economy-related, welfare system-related and housing-related variables. A quasi-experimental approach was employed in the form of a ‘first differencing’ ecological model, predicting the number of food parcels distributed by food banks in the Trussell Trust network. This neutralised bias from omitting time-constant unobserved confounders.ResultsSeven predictors in the model were statistically significant, including four related to the welfare system: the value of the main out-of-work benefit; the roll-out of Universal Credit; benefit sanctions; and the ‘bedroom tax’ in social housing. Of the remaining three significant predictors, one regarded the ‘supply’ side (the number of food banks in the area) and two regarded the ‘demand’ side (the proportion of working age population on out-of-work benefits; the proportion of working age population who were unemployed).ConclusionThe structure of the welfare system has been partly responsible for driving food bank use in the UK since 2011. Severe food insecurity could be alleviated by reforming aspects of the benefit system that have been evidenced to be implicated in the rise in food bank use. More broadly, the findings provide support for ‘Health and Health Equity in All Policies’ approach to policymaking.

A genealogy of the food bank: Historicising the rise of food charity in the UK

AbstractIt is widely supposed that food banks and key aspects of the UK's wider food banking system – referral networks, eligibility tests, food vouchers, corporate sponsorship, and the close entanglement of food charity with local and national government – are new to the UK, either imported from North America or emerging ex nihilio with the Trussell Trust in the early 2000s. Drawing on local and national newspaper archives and data from Companies House, the Charity Commission, and internet archiving website the WayBack Machine, we present a genealogy that challenges these origins and situates UK food banking in a set of historically contingent practices, alliances, and struggles, many of which are nowadays forgotten. Contributing to work on policy mobilities in the voluntary sector, we pay particular attention to the development of the UK's contemporary food banking system through the movement of ideas and practices between different organisations (for example, between food banks, corporate food retailers, and US tech companies) and different charitable fields (including overseas aid and homelessness), between the charitable sector and the state, and between different places both within and outside the UK. The resulting genealogy not only extends, and reframes, the history of British food banking – including claims as to the recent institutionalisation of food banks in a neoliberal state welfare apparatus – but works to disrupt the rationalities and ‘regime(s) of acceptability’ that underpin and maintain the modus operandi of many current‐day food banks.

The ethical dilemmas of foodbanking: an analysis of the More Than Food programme

This article contributes to debates about the ethicality of foodbanks, a pervasive element of the UK welfare support infrastructure. Drawing on qualitative interview data, we use the concepts of ‘food poverty knowledge’ and ‘lay morality’ to analyse the narratives of those running a major Trussell Trust ‘foodbank-plus’ programme and explore inherent moral sentiments therein about how those who are in food poverty are understood. We identify a contradiction between foodbankers’ ‘structural’ understanding of poverty and the implicitly agential assumptions that underpin the programme. We suggest that this represents a precarious ethical position on which to base practice.

Working-age adults using food banks in England have significantly poorer health and higher rates of mental health conditions than adults in the general population: A cross-sectional quantitative study.

Food bank use has risen rapidly in the UK since 2010. The negative health impacts of food insecurity are well-documented, but there is a lack of quantitative research exploring the health of people using food banks, who are most often severely food insecure. To address this gap, this study compares health outcomes between working-age adults using food banks and those in the general population in England, investigating whether adults using food banks are disproportionately affected by poor health, even after accounting for socioeconomic differences. Data from a survey of 598 adults using Trussell Trust food banks in 2016-2017 were merged with data from the Health Survey for England (HSE) from 2016. Outcome variables of interest were: self-rated health, life-limiting health conditions (disability) and self-reported metabolic, cardiovascular, musculoskeletal and mental health conditions. Logistic regression models were used to examine the odds of adults using food banks having health conditions, disability and poor self-rated health compared to the general population. The prevalence rates of poor self-rated health, disability, mental health disorders and musculoskeletal conditions were significantly higher among adults using food banks than the general population (p<.05 for all outcomes). These associations remained after accounting for gender, age, marital status, employment and education. This comparative study highlights the many health disadvantages among adults using food bank compared to the general population. The higher risk of poor self-rated health, disability and mental health conditions was not fully explained by measures of low socioeconomic status. Possible explanations for these findings include: first, that poor health may increase vulnerability to food insecurity, and, in turn, use of food banks; second, that experiences of food insecurity and food bank use may cause declines in health; and third, that food bank use and poor health may be joint outcomes arising from the last decade of austerity in the UK.

Towards a geographical account of shame: Foodbanks, austerity, and the spaces of austere affective governmentality

This paper is about shame, its geographies, and its role in the government of conduct in austerity Britain. Drawing on ethnographic and interview data from a Trussell Trust foodbank in the Valleys of South Wales, the geography of shame is investigated through its spatiality, temporality, and politics. This paper demonstrates how shame is a central framework for understanding the contested politics of austerity both in the places it creates and through the feelings, behaviours, and values it encourages.

Still bleeding: The variegated geographies of austerity and food banking in rural England and Wales

This paper builds on a nascent literature on rural austerity to explore the variegated geographies of austerity and food banking in rural areas of England and Wales. The paper makes three key contributions. First, drawing on a range of existing and newly updated datasets on local authority spending power and service spending, changes to welfare benefits, benefit sanctions, and local welfare assistance schemes we use the Office for National Statistics (ONS) 2011 Rural-Urban Classification of Local Authorities to provide the first comprehensive analysis of austerity in rural England and Wales. We outline the variegated nature of rural austerity and examine the ways in which new geographies of austerity are overwriting and compounding problems of rural poverty in the UK. Second, we combine newly available data from the Trussell Trust and Independent Food Aid Network to outline a geography of food banking in rural England and Wales, highlighting the uneven distribution of food aid across rural areas and discuss some of the problems rural locations pose to both those seeking and providing food aid. Third, drawing on interviews with food bank managers, volunteers and clients in two very different rural areas we examine how different rural contexts produce different experiences of and responses to poverty and food insecurity, paying particular attention to localised cultures of charity, welfare and deservingness. We conclude by setting out a new research agenda around which scholars might further explore the relationships between austerity, food insecurity and food banking in rural areas. • First comprehensive study of austerity in rural England and Wales. • Austerity compounds problems of rural poverty. • Examines the unique challenges facing people experiencing food insecurity in rural areas. • Uneven geography of food banking in rural England and Wales. • Different ‘food bank scenes’ shape the experience of and responses to food insecurity in different rural places.

Child poverty, food insecurity, and respiratory health during the COVID-19 pandemic

Child poverty, food insecurity, and respiratory health during the COVID-19 pandemic

Nutritional adequacy and content of food bank parcels in Oxfordshire, UK: a comparative analysis of independent and organisational provision.

Food bank use has increased significantly in the UK. With the rise in demand, it is imperative that users are receiving food parcels that meet their requirements. The present study aimed to explore whether typical food parcels, supplied by The Trussell Trust and independent food banks, were meeting the daily nutrient and energy requirements of an adult user. The Trussell Trust (n=2) and independent food banks (n=9) were surveyed in Oxfordshire, UK. Data were collected on food bank use, resources, donations and parcel content. The energy and nutrient contents of a representative parcel were compared with the average dietary reference values (DRVs) for an adult. Additional comparisons were made between The Trussell Trust and independent provision. Parcels provided energy, carbohydrate, sugar, protein and fibre contents that significantly exceeded the DRVs. In total, 62.2% of energy was provided as carbohydrate and 569% of the DRV was provided by sugars. The vitamin D and retinol content of the parcels was significantly lower than the DRVs, meeting 25% and 27% of users' needs respectively; provision of all other micronutrients exceeded the DRVs. The Trussell Trust's parcels provided significantly less vitamin D and copper than independent parcels. Food bank parcels distributed in Oxfordshire, UK, exceeded energy requirements and provided disproportionately high sugar and carbohydrate and inadequate vitamin A and vitamin D compared to the UK guidelines. Improved links with distributors and access to cold food storage facilities would help to address these issues, via increased fresh food provision.

The vital politics of foodbanking: Hunger, austerity, biopower

This paper develops a Foucauldian reading of the phenomenon of UK foodbanking. Rather than providing straightforward subsistence, Trussell Trust foodbanks exercise a vital politics that acts over hungry bodies at a time of austerity. Through conceptualisation of the vital technologies of biopower, this article draws attention to the three underpinning logics of this system: interpretation, provisioning and improvement. These techniques reveal a power over life that not only seeks to provide subsistence, but to transform hunger into a technical object through which needy bodies can be improved out of existence. However, this paper also highlights the limits of this biopolitical and disciplinary system by drawing attention to its scalar politics, specifically emphasising the everyday power of living that undermine techniques over the vital life of bodies and populations. In so doing, this paper calls for more sustained attention to how the politics of life is lived and lively, situated and multi-scalar, through conceptualisation of its vital geographies.

Food bank operational characteristics and rates of food bank use across Britain

BackgroundFood banks are a common community-based response to household food insecurity in high-income countries. While the profile of their users and nature of the quality of food they provide have been researched, few studies have examined their operational characteristics to explore the accessibility of their services for people at risk of food insecurity. This study describes the nature of operations in a food bank network operating in Britain and explores how operations are associated with volume of use.MethodsData from The Trussell Trust Foodbank’s network of 1145 distribution centres in 2015/16 on hours of operation, locations, and usage were combined with national statistics on Working Tax Credit claimants, disability and unemployment. Descriptive statistics focused on how often and when food banks were open within local authorities. The relationships between operational characteristics and volume of use were examined using regression analyses. Interaction terms tested how relationships between indicators of need with food bank usage changed with operational characteristics.ResultsWeekday operating hours were primarily between the hours of 10 a.m. and 2 p.m., but at any given hour no more than 20% of distribution centres were open, with fewer than 3% open after 4 pm. Where food banks had fewer distribution centres and operating hours, the volume of food bank usage was lower. In-work poverty, disability, and unemployment rates were all associated with higher volume of usage; however, the relationship between disability and food bank use was modified by the density of food banks and number of operating hours. Where food banks were less accessible, the relationship between disability and food bank use was diminished.ConclusionsThese findings suggest operational characteristics are an important part of access to food banks and raise questions about the ability of food banks to meet the needs of people at risk of food insecurity in Britain.

Foodbanks: their use and how to access one.

I was recently at a conference of GPs and a paper was presented related to food poverty. In the discussion that followed, I realised that I, and many others in the room with me, lacked a full understanding of how a foodbank is run or accessed. Here I share my experiences of visiting a local foodbank in East Yorkshire with a foundation doctor colleague. Foodbanks are run by the voluntary sector, the largest being the Trussell Trust with a network of over 420 foodbanks.1 They gave away over 1.3 million emergency food supplies last year, nearly half a million to people with children.1 When we arrived at the foodbank, we were struck by the unassuming location. It was basically a small office and storeroom situated halfway down a residential road. We …

Tackling the social determinants of health: maximising community assets to help people receive the right support, in the right place, at the right time

Introduction: Tackling the social determinants of health requires a multi-level and multi-partnered approach. Timely access to accurate information about services and support that can help people to live well is vital for good health and wellbeing. ALISS engages and empowers communities to find and share what matters to them. Short description of practice change implemented: A Local Information System for Scotland (ALISS) has its origins in the premise; “what is in my local community that can help me to live well?” ALISS is the system that facilitates the aggregation and dissemination of health and wellbeing information across Scotland. Along with being people powered (patients listing what they find helpful), ALISS shares information through an Application Programme Interface (API). This means that information added once is visible via a number of platforms. Organisations/people can ‘claim’ services so that they can maintain their own information in order to increase chance of accuracy. Aim and theory of change: Communities are often full of resources that can support people to live well but information about these resources is often invisible, inaccurate, or stored only in one place. If this information is findable, accurate, and relevant, people are more likely to receive the right support, in the right place, at the right time. Targeted population and stakeholders: In line with proportionate universalism, we prioritise populations that data suggests are most in need in then scale. Currently we are working with people that access foodbanks. 144,000 people accessed food through the Trussell Trust foodbanks in Scotland in 2016. There is a direct link between the people who use foodbanks and their level of health and financial inequality. Timeline: ALISS originated in 2009. Since then ALISS has started a redevelopment of the technical infrastructure and change in the service delivery. Our new platform will be launched in January 2018. Highlights: People powered information is now findable, accurate, and visible through several platforms. ALISS makes hidden social capital visible. ALISS is a unique example of coproduction. Comments on sustainability: ALISS is referenced in the NHS Scotland Chief Executive annual report for 2016 as a tool to support the aggregation and dissemination of health and wellbeing information across Scotland. Transferability: ALISS is open source. ALISS has been used to power the aggregation and dissemination of health and wellbeing information across England, with links being forged with Kaiser Permanente (USA). Conclusions: Strategic and statutory partners, such as Police Scotland and NHS 24 value trusted health and wellbeing information, including from third sector resources. Scaling and operational growth plan aligned to communities living with the highest levels of health and social inequality ( Discussions: ALISS has always worked to the principle that individuals are always at the heart of development and planning. This coproduced approach is central to the success of the service. Lessons learned: Trying to coproduce a system that presents users with relevant and accurate search results from informal data has been the biggest challenge to ALISS.

Impact of Welfare Benefit Sanctioning on Food Insecurity: a Dynamic Cross-Area Study of Food Bank Usage in the UK

AbstractSince 2009, the UK has witnessed marked increases in the rate of sanctions applied to unemployment insurance claimants, as part of a wider agenda of austerity and welfare reform. In 2013, over one million sanctions were applied, stopping benefit payments for a minimum of four weeks and potentially leaving people facing economic hardship and driving them to use food banks. Here we explore whether sanctioning is associated with food bank use by linking data from The Trussell Trust Foodbank Network with records on sanctioning rates across 259 local authorities in the UK. After accounting for local authority differences and time trends, the rate of adults fed by food banks rose by an additional 3.36 adults per 100,000 (95% CI: 1.71 to 5.01) as the rate of sanctioning increased by 10 per 100,000 adults. The availability of food distribution sites affected how tightly sanctioning and food bank usage were associated (p&lt; 0.001); in areas with few distribution sites, rising sanctions led to smaller increases in food bank usage. In conclusion, sanctioning is closely linked with rising food bank usage, but the impact of sanctioning on household food insecurity is not fully reflected in available data.

More than just foodbanks: The Trussell Trust

Thirteen million people live below the poverty line in the UK, with families going hungry every day for a variety of reasons. Emma Thorogood explains how The Trussell Trust partners with local communities to help stop UK hunger.

Developing a business analytics methodology: A case study in the foodbank sector

The current research seeks to address the following question: how can organizations align their business analytics development projects with their business goals? To pursue this research agenda we adopt an action research framework to develop and apply a business analytics methodology (BAM). The four-stage BAM (problem situation structuring, business model mapping, analytics leverage analysis, and analytics implementation) is not a prescription. Rather, it provides a logical structure and logical precedence of activities that can be used to guide the practice of analytics (i.e., a mental model). The client for the action research project is The Trussell Trust, which is a UK charity with the mission of empowering local communities to combat poverty and exclusion. As part of the action research project the research team created the UK's first dynamic visualization tool for crises related to food poverty. The prototype uses foodbank data to map geographical demand and aligns findings to 2011 Census data to predict where additional foodbanks may be needed. Research findings are that: (1) the analytics methodology provides an umbrella for, and applies equally to, data science and Operational Research (OR); (2) that the practice of business analytics is an entangled and emergent mix of top-down analysis and bottom-up action; and, (3) that, for the third sector in particular, analytics can be usefully approached as a collective and community endeavor.

‘I feel I'm Giving Something Back to Society’: Constructing the ‘Active Citizen’ and Responsibilising Foodbank Use

Foodbanks and other forms of charitable welfare provision are fast becoming an established feature of the UK social security system. Drawing on over two years of ethnographic observation in a Trussell Trust foodbank in North East England, this paper explores the relationship between the construction of the ‘active citizen’ and lived experiences of foodbank users and volunteers. Findings show how participants’ experiences and behaviour challenges popular political and policy narratives that individuals are using foodbanks because of poor lifestyle choices. The internalisation or rejection of this narrative is then examined, contrasting the different forms of citizenship that arise. Through the significant work that goes into living on a low income, people both aligned with and challenged the ideas underpinning ‘active citizenship’.

Food Banks: A Lens on the Hungry Body

Food Banks: A Lens on the Hungry Body

The perfect fit? Being both volunteer and ethnographer in a UK foodbank

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore both volunteer and ethnographer in a Trussell Trust foodbank in Stockton-on-Tees, North East England during a period of welfare reform and austerity. It shows how ethnographic researchers can develop a more effective qualitative understanding of foodbank use through volunteering. Design/methodology/approach – The methodological design was ethnographic both in terms of data collection and analysis. Volunteering and participant observation began in November 2013 and is ongoing. The data presented are derived from field notes of participant observations. Findings – Tensions are present when considering how best to write up ethnographic research when the researcher adopts a “volunteer ethnographer” role. The negotiation of relationships, practices, and emotions requires the researcher to appreciate the complex and “politicized” discourse surrounding foodbank use in order to report how the foodbank operates in an objective yet truly reflective way. Originality/value – There is an expanding research interest in the growth of foodbanks. This paper offers unique insights into the value and tensions of adopting the dual role of “volunteer ethnographer” when researching foodbank use in the UK.