Household Support Funding and help with food in Bradford: reflections from the field
It all begins with an idea.
Bradford, UK, 31 July 2024
Introduction
We know that the numbers of people accessing food support increased significantly during the Covid-19 pandemic and this has remained high since then. Factors involved include, unaffordable costs of housing, energy and food, and restricted and inadequate access to welfare benefits (e.g. Universal credit, change to rules of child benefit).
Since last year, I have been working with people and organisations in Bradford who support people with food. Some organisations run food banks, with access to welfare advice 2-3 days a week. Others only give out parcels of ‘emergency food’ once a month. Some cook meals and take them to people on the street, others run community cafes with meals at reduced prices. Some organisations set up food pantries with membership schemes, where people get to choose up to 15 items of food for around £6 and support with opening a savings account. Others run community supermarkets with items at reduced prices. Some organisations only give out food and, sometimes toiletries. Others also help people with bills, housing issues, employment and benefits. The diversity and scale of provision is unprecedented.
We conducted a survey of 89 community food organisations; 62 of which were based in Bradford, and we subsequently ran workshops and interviews with staff working and volunteering in those organisations, as well as with other stakeholders.I have had insights from schools, higher education institutes, churches, Muslim faith inspired charities, food banks, community centres, children centres, housing associations, charities supporting homeless, refugees, people with disabilities and victims of domestic abuse.
In Bradford, the majority of organisations told us that they depend on local authority funding to be able to operate and some explicitly named the Household Support Fund (HSF); with many explaining that if the funding ended, they would have to stop providing food, or dramatically reduce it.
The Household Support Fund (HSF)
The Household Support Fund was introduced in September 2021 to support vulnerable households with essentials over the winter. Help was distributed by local authorities in England to pay towards “daily needs such as food, clothing and utilities”. Since its first introduction it has been extended four times, for a total of over 2.8 billion over three years.
Since 2021, the Household Support Fund has allowed local authorities “to provide support to households who would otherwise struggle to buy food or pay essential utility bills or meet other essential living costs or housing costs”. Local authorities can decide how to deliver support, as long as they follow the guidelines established by the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP). With regards to food, local authorities can decide whether help should be provided in cash, vouchers, or in kind. Local authorities can also decide whether to deliver help directly, or through partner organisations (e.g schools, community centres).
The Household Support Fund in Bradford
From our data collection, we understand, that in 2023/2024 Bradford Council has been using the HSF to:
support energy payments
fund provision of welcoming and warm spaces
fund food provided by food banks and food pantries
fund provision of emergency food parcels (up to once a month per household) through community organisations.
In 2023-2024 over 50% of the budget went to “energy security”, a winter direct payment of £100 or £150 made to everyone receiving Council Tax Reduction (around 44.000 people). The next largest fund, called Food banks, covers the costs of a food hub, a large charity which buys in bulk and distributes to around 30 organisations, including food banks and food pantries. The third largest fund covers the costs of the welcoming and warm spaces across 180 organisations (e.g. libraries, community centres, CIC) to provide warm/cold spaces with free drinks and snacks and, in some cases, light meals too. A fourth arm of funding went to the Food Parcel Programme (around 80 community organisations receive funding to purchase and provide monthly food parcels to 50-100 households each). Organisations received guidelines on standards for parcel composition (protein, carbohydrates, fruit and vegetables and snack) and size, which is meant to take into account household composition. The 80 organisations have been told to give the parcels to anyone who comes forward asking for help, and no eligibility criteria were established. Council staff said that around 7000 parcels are given out every month through this programme, which counts as an estimated 20000 people in total.
Operating through a network of organisations was considered to provide some advantages:
The local authority was able to ensure that the most deprived areas in Bradford had at least one community organisation providing food parcels.
Community organisations are assumed to be in the best position to target the content of the parcel to needs and preferences of the communities they serve
Basing support with food in community centres and other organisations providing a range of support services (advice on benefits and housing, support with employment) would give people coming for the food the opportunity to get help with underlying issues.
One of the disadvantages acknowledged, both by people working for the local authority and people working for some of these organisations, is that purchasing, sorting out parcels and in some cases, organising home deliveries, is a big ask for staff and volunteers and takes lots of the organisation’s time and space.
Some people we talked to have a critical view of the provision of emergency food parcels. They fear that providing regular free food without questioning or responding to the underlying issues causing the need for help would breed dependency.
The issue with short term funding
In January 2024, neither the council nor the organisations knew whether HSF would be further extended. Concerns were shared, both in the workshops and the interviews, with Bradford organisations on what would happen to thousands of households relying on monthly parcels .
It was only in the Spring Budget on 6th of March 2024 that the government announced a further HSF extension until September 2024, after increasing pressure from charities and a petition with over a hundred councils to the chancellor to request a further extension.
However, due to delayed funding from the DWP and delayed arrival of the guidance relating to the programme, there was a slight delay in approving the works for 2024/25 and renewing the contracts with the 80 community organisations on the same terms.
Our research study has been operating during this period of funding instability and, by the time the extension was announced, I was embedded in two different community food organisations in Bradford, conducting ethnographic research while volunteering with food provision. One of the two organisations felt particularly affected by the uncertainty that the lack of updates on funding caused. Until the end of March, this community organisation provided, on average, around 60 monthly parcels every Wednesday (the day that I volunteer as an embedded researcher). I was told that between 10 and 30 parcels were given away on the other days of the week, with peaks of up to 50 parcels a day, before Ramadan. Parcels until March were all generous in size and variety of food. We have always had fresh fruit and vegetables, 15 eggs, tinned and dry legumes, 5kg of rice, tinned vegetables, oil, pasta, sauce, salt, sugar, coffee or tea.
Reflections based on my field work
In March we started alerting people coming for their monthly parcel that there was no certainty around funding. And, with no more funds the parcels would stop.
The announcement of the funding extension came late, leaving local authorities and organisations in a limbo for at least a couple of weeks between the end of March and the start of April.
As an embedded volunteer, I had the opportunity to witness the impact of a combination of funding streams ending and uncertainty in future fundings on people accessing the service and as well providing the service.
On 17 April 2024 I went to the organisation for my volunteering work to find almost empty shelves. The week before they were closed so they didn’t provide any food at all that Wednesday. The staff told me that we were just giving out what they had left because they were not expecting more deliveries.
I was surprised because I had heard about the extension of funding and I thought everything was back to ‘normal’. However, they told me that, as demand increased, they needed to apply for additional funding from different sources, because HSF would only cover 50 monthly parcels per month and they were receiving requests from many more people. Unfortunately, both additional pots of funding also ended in March, during the time when there was uncertainty on continuity of HSF.
“To try and be fair” and give the little food still available ‘to the ones who needed it the most”, the community organisation introduced a new eligibility criterion. We were told that we could only give food to people providing evidence of receiving benefits and who were able to show a bank statement with £500 (at some point they said £1000 and there was confusion) or less on it, with refugees and asylum seekers being the only exceptions. The introduction of eligibility checks was not part of Bradford Council policy. To me, it felt like an attempt to meet some level of demand despite having almost run out of food.
None of the staff and volunteers I was sharing my shift with has ever had to screen people eligibility before. Some staff members expressed their discomfort and there were some difficult moments when we all felt upset for having to turn people away. Staff also felt uncomfortable about having to challenge people asking them to show very personal documents.
For the ones who had the right documents I was able to make food parcels, but I had no fresh food to give, or oil and the selection of legumes was very reduced. People were still saying ‘thanks’, but I felt sorry that we were giving something so different in quantity and quality compared to the month before. Two mums with babies looking thin and pale said they didn’t have the right documents to show, but they were still hoping we could give them food.
A week later, when I came for my shift, I found that the shelves were even emptier than the week before and no more food had been delivered. One of the senior staff members explained that the extension of HSF had now arrived, but a combination of people off sick and on leave caused disruption in the ordering of the food, which had resulted in long delays in the delivery of food order.
Some people called asking if they could come to collect their monthly parcel and they were made aware that the quantity or quality was not the same as before. Others just came without calling. To try and discourage people who were not in greater need, people are still asked to show proof of benefits and bank account statements.
I was told to try and stretch the remaining food to do about 20 parcels as they were expecting at least that number of people to come. It felt uncomfortable making monthly parcels so small and missing the food people are mostly looking forward to receiving, like fresh fruit and vegetables, pasta, sauce, oil, and eggs.
A mum from Nigeria looked very disheartened when she was filling a small bag with the contents of the parcel, and she kept saying, “Are you sure that there is no oil left or eggs? Where are the onions and the potatoes? What am I going to cook with this?"
I went back to this community centre last Wednesday. Things looked almost like before April. There was enough of everything, only the fresh milk and eggs have no longer been delivered. During my 5 hour shift, over 30 households received a monthly food parcel. While this made me feel better, as a volunteer, I was also wondering: how long is this going to last? Uncertainty on public funding and the fact that many organisations rely on the skills and the time of a limited number of staff and volunteers make Bradford's food support system fragile. A longer term plan is needed to address food insecurity and everyone should be involved in designing it: people experiencing food insecurity, community food organisations, food hubs and food charities distributing surplus, supermarkets, the food industry, local authorities and most important, the wider welfare system.
Giorgia Previdoli, Research Fellow, Fair Food Futures UK
This study is funded by the NIHR Public Health Research Programme (NIHR151034). The views expressed are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the NIHR or the Department of Health and Social Care.