This study

As part of her postgraduate taught research project, Pickering investigated the perceptions and experiences of the social and economic impact of Covid-19 on service users of food banks and how the voluntary sector responded in meeting the increased need for food. The study had three objectives:

1. 1. To compare and contrast the experiences of two food banks and how they have managed during the pandemic by investigating both the extent to which they have been affected by, and how they have responded to the Covid-19 crisis.

2. 2. To identify the effect of the economic and social impact of the Covid-19 crisis on service users of food banks during this period.

3. 3. To explore the perceptions and experiences of those who volunteered at food banks during the pandemic.

A qualitative approach was adopted to investigate the ‘rich tapestry of people’s lives’ (Braun and Clarke, Reference Braun and Clarke2013: 24) through accounts and testimonies where interpretive meaning matters most (Have, 2004). Qualitative studies can also provide novel insights into so-called ‘hard to reach’ groups, capturing ‘voices’ that are otherwise unheard or socially marginalised (Braun and Clarke, Reference Braun and Clarke2013) particularly in a public and political discourse in which the lived experience of those in poverty seems to be absent.

The two sites where Pickering volunteered were selected, both of which were in an urban area in the East Midlands (summarised in Table 1). The first of these (Food Bank A) had been in operation as part of the Trussell Trust network for over a decade prior to the pandemic. The second (Food Bank B) was set up by a local political party during the pandemic and later became an independent charity. In keeping with Power et al. (Reference Power, Doherty, Pybus and Pickett2020), this project might best be described as ‘practitioner-researcher’ work, given that Pickering was volunteering at the sites prior to undertaking the research. Volunteering responsibilities included preparing food parcels, checking stock, and supporting food distribution. Later on in the timeframe of the research (June–September 2021) Pickering also engaged directly with clients. It is important to note here that travel to any other food bank sites to expand the scope of the study was problematic due to Covid-19 lockdown restrictions. To volunteer during the first phase and during ethical approval applications, a letter issued by the food bank was carried by the volunteer so that any breach of police-enforced lockdowns could be explained.

Table 1.

Food bank sites

¹ Note, this date range was selected as it is the period during which the first UK Covid-19 lockdown was in force. Restrictions eased in June 2020, with the introduction of social distancing measures on 23 June 2020.

² At the time of the study, there were no employed staff at Food Bank B so trustees were offered the opportunity to be interviewed in place of staff. For consistency, the trustees are referred to as ‘staff’ in this study.

As Table 1 details, there were other interesting reasons for engaging with the two sites, notably the variances in how long the food banks had been running, who operated them and the different referral models that were in operation. A detailed comparison is outside of the scope of this current paper, though some of our findings illustrate how the two food banks were different in their adaptation to the new realities brought about by the pandemic.

Food bank staff and volunteers were recruited through purposive non-probability sampling to ensure that rich data was produced (Braun and Clarke, Reference Braun and Clarke2013). For the recruitment of service users, convenience sampling was undertaken whereby participants were selected based on their willingness to engage in the interview process and their availability (Etikan et al., Reference Etikan, Musa and Alkassim2016). Although bias is common with these types of sampling methods, the researcher aimed to maintain subjectivity and reflexibility (Etikan et al., Reference Etikan, Musa and Alkassim2016) by reflecting on her own views and beliefs throughout the sampling process, further necessitated by the insider/outsider positionality perspectives that emerged from being both a volunteer and a researcher (Bukamal, Reference Bukamal2022).

The six members of staff had been working at their respective food bank between twelve months to eleven years. There were a variety of hours worked per week with some working over the usual forty-hour week. The volunteers gave time at the food banks between one point five hours to twelve hours per week. Three of the five volunteers interviewed did not work (unemployed or retired), one volunteer was self-employed, and one volunteer was employed full time.

Two of the four service users interviewed both confirmed they were retired as well as disabled (unable to work). One service user was employed full time and the other service user interviewed was self-employed. Five of the staff and volunteers were women, five were men, and one was non-binary. There were two male service users and two female service users interviewed. The overall ethnicity of the interview participants was White, one volunteer interviewed was Black/Black British, and another volunteer Asian/Asian British. Whilst unbalanced, this may reflect the Office of National Statistics (ONS) Census 2011 data for the borough, where around 92 per cent of people are identified as White.Footnote ¹ Altogether, this article draws on the accounts of a relatively small number of participants, reflecting the difficulties of undertaking fieldwork in the pandemic.

This study obtained ethical approval from Staffordshire University Ethics Committee during a period when the pandemic was constraining fieldwork. Adjustments to the research design were made as guided by university staff to ensure that public health guidance was adhered to. The interviews were conducted between twenty-first of June 2021 and seventeenth of September 2021, following the easing of Covid-19 restrictions in the UK with the rule of six or two households indoors being applied.Footnote ² As Food Bank A was a large site, the opportunity for participants to be interviewed face-to-face, adhering to social distance rules, was offered to expand inclusivity and uptake. Participants were provided with a participant information sheet to ensure informed consent was sought. The participant information sheets were adjusted for different groups of participants (staff and volunteers and service users) and for the different interview methods (face-to-face including details on health and safety measures related to Covid-19 and virtual interviews). The limitations of a postgraduate taught research project meant that no compensation was made available to participants.

Due to the nature and inherent limitations of these sampling methods and the small-scale nature of the study, no claims are made to generalisation. Rather, this study offers some unique qualitative insights into the lived experience of those involved in food banks during a particular moment of historical interest. The literature review conducted as part of this study looked at research on food banks and Covid-19 published between 2020–2021 and after inclusion criteria was applied, just four studies were eligible for consideration. More recent research has advanced our understanding of the effects of the pandemic on food banks and users, but there is still scope for more work that considers the qualitative perspectives of those who use, volunteer for, and staff food banks.

This paper now goes on to review two important aspects of this work drawing both on the accounts from the study and the wider literature. Firstly, we discuss how food banks adapted to the changing and unique circumstances of the pandemic. Secondly, we consider aspects of evidence that support an increasing consensus that food banks have become what former Prime Minister Gordon Brown referred to as the ‘last line of defence against destitution’ in place of social security (Brown, Reference Brown2023).

Food banks in the time of the pandemic

The Covid-19 pandemic presented unique challenges for food banks. Increased demand and supply problems were present, caused by the combination of new or increased need, panic buying in supermarkets and reduced donations (Caplan, Reference Caplan2020; Power et al., Reference Power, Doherty, Pybus and Pickett2020). These challenges demonstrated the fragility of a system designed to provide short-term support.

For those volunteering and working at the frontline of the two food banks discussed within this paper, these issues were acute. Teams had to adapt quickly to a changing context and increased demand:

Like other Trussell Trust food banks, Food Bank A operated on a referral model from third-party agencies. During the pandemic it shifted to self-referral for the first time:

The shielding of food bank volunteers along with the closure of food banks or the switch to delivery only services also had profound impacts on the supply side (Caplan, Reference Caplan2020). Graven et al. (Reference Graven, Power, Jones, Possingham and Bryant2020) investigated the availability of food aid in Bradford and how services have responded to the Covid-19 pandemic. They found that the closure of social and community support services, combined with social distance measures and shielding requirements led to pressures on staffing and the availability of volunteers. Conversely, Food Bank A experienced an influx in volunteer support, combined with the ability to be agile and flexible enough to respond to new volunteers:

There was a shift in who used food banks during the pandemic, with two discernible features. On the one hand, there was increased need amongst those already in poverty due to the exacerbation of existing social and economic inequalities (Power et al., Reference Power, Doherty, Pybus and Pickett2020). On the other, new needs emerged because of an increase in financial hardship. Although food insecurity was on the rise before the pandemic, more people became food insecure during the pandemic (Food Foundation, 2021) and food bank support was increasingly seen as a ‘core welfare intervention’ (Fitzpatrick et al., Reference Fitzpatrick, Bramley, Blenkinsopp, Wood, Sosenko, Littlewood, Johnsen, Watts, Treanor and McIntyre2020: 36). Global figures demonstrate the sharp rise in poverty with some estimates suggesting an increase of between 119 million and 124 million global poor in 2020 (United Nations Economic and Social Council 2021).

The Trussell Trust produced several reports from the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, accurately predicting then what would become the significant rise in levels of destitution in the UK by the end of 2020 (Trussell Trust, 2020). In State of Hunger: Year Two report (Trussell Trust, 2021: 3), nearly everyone (95 per cent) using a food bank was defined as ‘destitute’: people unable to afford essentials and who have a very low or zero income. Furthermore, those that were at risk of falling into poverty or closest to the poverty line before the pandemic were more likely to be food insecure following the pandemic (Trussell Trust, 2021). The ‘most striking finding’ of the study was that almost half of people who used food banks owed money to the DWP in mid-2020, making the DWP the main creditor (Trussell Trust, 2021: 48). Covid-19 provided some respite in the form of relaxed contact with the DWP. As one participant in this study highlighted:

In Northern Ireland, Furey et al. (Reference Furey, Caraher, Finlay, Leeson, McFarlane and Taylor2020)’s summary of results from polling for the Department for Communities found that one in twelve respondents experienced at least one food poverty symptom before the pandemic, which increased to one in five during the early lockdown period or during the past month. Jo, a member of staff at Food Bank B identified the link between pre-existing inequalities and Covid-19:

Koltai et al. (Reference Koltai, Toffolutti, Mckee and Stuckler2021) carried out a longitudinal study survey from April to July 2020 to investigate food insecurity during the Covid-19 pandemic. The study found that reporting an inability to eat healthy or nutritious food rose from 3.2 per cent in April to 16.3 per cent by July 2020, which was most pronounced for Asian respondents, the self-employed and respondents aged thirty-five to forty-four. Additionally, people who became unemployed experienced higher odds of being hungry but not eating, compared to those who are furloughed and the persistently employed. The authors concluded that the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme (CJRS) had helped to protect some from food insecurity, although it was not enough to mitigate the overall increase in food insecurity and access to affordable food. Mark, a service user at Food Bank B, had used Food Bank A before the Covid-19 pandemic, then found work before being furloughed and eventually dismissed during the pandemic as a catering assistant:

Those presenting as a ‘new need’ included ‘new redundancies’ (Dennis, Staff, Food Bank A), people furloughed under the CJRS, and those who ‘were used to being in employment and didn’t know the system and new to benefits’ (Brian, Staff, Food Bank A). Those that were not eligible for furlough were accessing the food bank, sometimes for the first time:

Volunteers adjusted to seeing new service users from areas they perceived to be ‘well to do’ (Sally, Volunteer, Food Bank A). Emma highlighted the initial surprise expressed by volunteers:

Several participants cited extra costs incurred during the pandemic as a reason contributing to the increase in food insecurity:

Jo (Staff, Food Bank B) identified how schools, pre-pandemic, had tackled ‘hidden poverty’ by providing school dinners and breakfasts. Julia (Service User, Food Bank B) identified increased internet usage costs due to home schooling. The Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG) found that nearly nine in ten families ‘faced additional costs as a result of coronavirus, and were spending substantially more on food, electricity, and other essentials’ (CPAG 2020: 3). Food shopping had become more expensive, with increased usage of local convenience shops, notably priced higher than supermarkets. The Joseph Rowntree Foundation found that people with mental and physical health issues relied on local shops during the pandemic (Fitzpatrick et al., Reference Fitzpatrick, Bramley, Blenkinsopp, Wood, Sosenko, Littlewood, Johnsen, Watts, Treanor and McIntyre2020). Jo described how the lack of access to public transport is a problem that people living in poverty disproportionately face, relying on local and often more expensive amenities ‘…because that’s what’s in walking distance. And that obviously costs more. So they’re just stuck in this cycle’ (Jo, Staff, Food Bank B).

Cummins et al. (Reference Cummins, Berger, Cornelsen, Eling, Er, Greener, Kalbus, Karapici, Law, Ndlovu and Yau2020) examined the changes to the urban food retail system during the pandemic including the re-localisation of urban food retail, highlighting a shift to purchasing food at local food retailers, an increase in digital groceries which benefits more affluent households, and a change in how fast-food restaurants and takeaway businesses operated. Stockpiling and panic buying also created food supply shortages and increased food insecurity for those in low-income households:

This corresponds with previous research (Power et al., Reference Power, Doherty, Pybus and Pickett2020), which found that low-income households that depend on reduced cost items were unable to afford the more expensive items that were available due to stockpiling. Food supply shortage impacted food banks which relied on surplus stock donated from supermarkets and donations from individuals (Power et al., Reference Power, Doherty, Pybus and Pickett2020). The lack of food supply combined with the severe increase in demand from both the ‘old poor’ (Caplan, Reference Caplan2020) and ‘newly hungry’ (Butler, Reference Butler2020) for food parcels created a ‘perfect storm’ for food banks.

Food banks as core welfare provision

Food banks have been described as ‘successful failures’ that provide sticking plasters and act as ‘shunting yards’ for addressing poverty in neo-liberal economies (Ronson and Caraher, Reference Ronson, Caraher, Caraher and Coveney2015). Despite being set up as temporary and emergency food measures, food banks too often become indefinite fixtures, substituting for government interventions on food poverty. Where government help retreats, access to non-governmental food aid increases. In the USA, for instance, participation in government funded food assistance programmes declined during periods of welfare reform designed to reduce food stamp usage. At the same time, those seeking help from community and non-profit soup kitchens rose substantially (Berner and O’Brien, Reference Berner, Ozer and Paynter2008). As the opening paragraphs of this paper demonstrated, food banks have increased at an astonishing rate: in 2000, there was only one food bank recorded in the UK (Wells and Caraher, Reference Wells and Caraher2014) with the first having been set up in 1998 in Newport (Beck and Gwilym, Reference Beck and Gwilym2022). That emergency food aid has become a normalised supplemental provision for those on low incomes is not surprising. What is perhaps more striking is how food banks became what Fitzpatrick et al. (Reference Fitzpatrick, Bramley, Blenkinsopp, Wood, Sosenko, Littlewood, Johnsen, Watts, Treanor and McIntyre2020) described as a ‘core welfare support service’ during Covid-19. There are two reasons for this.

The first reason will resonate with those who recall the periods of lockdown as services reduced or retreated behind government-imposed restrictions. As a result of frontline services closing or moving from face-to-face to telephone or online, food banks became an important source of support for service users, extending their remit beyond the provision of food:

Marcia commented that General Practitioner (GP) surgeries were a frequent referrer to the food bank as people’s first point of contact: ‘you know, if somebody is in a state and they aren’t eating [at] all…they would visit their doctor [because of] mental health issues’ (Marcia, Staff, Food Bank A). In this respect, food banks had been embedded in the welfare system for some time (Power et al., Reference Power, Doherty, Pybus and Pickett2020). Lockdown and attendant isolation had exacerbated service users’ mental health issues but without the usual sources of support in place:

Domestic abuse-related crimes increased each month from April to June 2020 (ONS, 2020) and Women’s Aid found that over two-thirds of respondents who live with their abuser felt they had ‘no one to turn to for help during lockdown’ (Women’s Aid, 2020: 9). The quotes from staff at the food banks show the vital support offered to people leaving their homes due to isolation affecting and worsening domestic violence:

The second, and more enduring reason, results from prolonged austerity measures that have led to the cumulative and sustained decline of the welfare architecture. As Bonvin et al. (Reference Bonvin, Lovey, Rosenstein, Kempeneers, Pomati, Jolly and Rees2021: 96) note, the pandemic brought to light both the enduring structural inadequacies in welfare design and those that were ‘more situational…echoing the specific circumstances of the pandemic’. At the apex of New Labour’s tenure in government, neighbourhood-based systems of support and welfare were vast in their scale and scope. Examples abound: neighbourhood renewal schemes, Police Community Support Officers, Connexions youth services, and Sure Start centres were easily identifiable local state structures and agents. In the years of austerity that defined the social policy landscape from 2010 onwards, this architecture was stripped away with little in its wake. This presented what Strong (Reference Strong2020: 211) called the ‘double-bind for impoverished communities’ placing a greater responsibility on communities whilst at the same time shifting policy priorities elsewhere. Commentary on and criticism of New Labour’s communitarian welfare agenda is outside of the scope of this paper (for further discussion see, for example, Cottam, Reference Cottam2019) but what cannot be disputed is that at the point when the pandemic destabilised social networks and support systems, the absence of neighbourhood level services contributed to a significant gap in need.

The resulting vacuum reframed aspects of the food bank response to emergent social needs, with social support being one of the most obvious ones, or what Strong refers to as the performance of ‘novel forms of getting by’ (2020: 217). In James’ view, some service users used the food bank as an opportunity simply to meet other people:

In line with the social practices of ‘helping others’, ‘deploying coping strategies’ and ‘creating atmospheres’ found in work by Lee et al. (Reference Lee, Coulson and Hackett2023a), Food Bank A focused on providing a sense of community and support to service users, through telephone befriending that ‘increased quite a bit’ during the pandemic (Dennis, Staff, Food Bank A), the provision of a community café to ‘listen and maybe offer advice if possible’ (Brian, Staff, Food Bank A), a ‘job club…computer club and…literacy club so anything that would work towards getting people back into work’ (Brian, Staff, Food Bank A) and the encouragement of volunteering:

As Garthwaite (Reference Garthwaite2016: 133) found, the food bank was a ‘lifeline’ that allowed service users to ‘get help from people who genuinely wanted to help [them]’. This dedication and motivation to help was present in this study, balancing what Lee et al. (Reference Lee, Graham, Croft and Hackett2023b) found to be the tension of providing food in a less stigmatising way whilst also ending ‘impersonal’ food aid. The commitment took a personal toll for some:

Jo described feeling the weight of responsibility safeguarding services users, in the context of unavailable support services during the pandemic:

The lack of support services and key referral agencies available during the pandemic resulted in new needs being addressed by food banks. Although there were issues around safeguarding, the food banks had developed their processes and strategies which professionalised their way of working including ‘reorganisation [and] retraining’ (Dennis, Staff, Food Bank A) and structures to enable ‘planned activities’ as a ‘planned charity’ (Emma, Staff, Food Bank B). Food banks have already expanded their provision to become, in many cases, the ‘multibank’ offering bedding, furnishings, and clothes (Brown, Reference Brown2023) but this study, along with others, suggests a move towards increasing advice, guidance, referral, and safeguarding roles that reframe the food bank role to a more general and core welfare provision: ‘providing the corporeal, material, and emotional resources necessary to provide subsistence to those “in need” at a time of austerity’ (Strong, Reference Strong2020: 212).

Other voluntary organisations partnered with the food banks to deliver their services. For example, in Food Bank A, Citizens Advice ran sessions at the food bank and a charitable furniture provider set up a satellite service in the food bank. Yet so much of what was offered was dependent on the provision of volunteers, subject to flux and wane. The emergence of a cadre of volunteers during the pandemic has been well documented (Paine et al., Reference Paine, Wilson, McCabe and Macmillan2022; McCabe et al., Reference McCabe, Wilson and Paine2020) and was reflected in this study:

The impact of the pandemic and its aftermath on volunteering is a mixed picture. This study, like many others, suggests an influx of temporary volunteers which enabled food banks to continue to operate during the pandemic. The wider picture though suggests a decline since 2018 in volunteering with recent figures indicating lower numbers of people raising money or taking part in sponsored events, organising, or helping to run activities, and campaigning on behalf of charities (Hill, Reference Hill2023). Work by Dederichs (Reference Dederichs2022) found that ‘volunteer rates dropped at least by a third in the United Kingdom during the first lockdown in 2020’. Speaking to the Guardian newspaper, the chief executive of the National Council for Voluntary Organisations observed that ‘lifelong volunteers broke their habit during the pandemic and haven’t yet got back to it’ (Hill, Reference Hill2023).

At the time of writing, the UK continues to grapple with the enduring cost of living crisis and continued rises in several social policy problem indicators. There is little evidence of emerging policy that could alter some of the challenges that food banks took the lead on addressing during the Covid-19 crisis. If anything, we are now witnessing the long tail of Covid-19 impacts as core services struggle to return to a semblance of normality and the wider social support architecture is simply not on any government (or opposition) priority list.