Britain’s food bank charities are buying in counselling, GP and mental health support services to help staff and volunteers cope with stress and exhaustion triggered by the explosion in demand for emergency food.
The wellbeing services are a response to a rise in burnout and stress among frontline food bank workers as they deal with expanding workloads and the emotional burden of supporting increasing numbers of destitute and emotionally traumatised clients.
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Emma Revie, the chief executive of the Trussell Trust, said the £30,000 investment was a response to the “unrelenting” mental and physical effects on its staff who were under huge pressure to provide emergency food aid and support to increasing numbers of people hit by rising poverty, benefit cuts and the cost of living crisis.
Sabine Goodwin, coordinator for the Independent Food Aid Network (Ifan), said: “As the UK poverty crisis worsens, food bank staff and volunteers are under perennial stress both to source adequate supplies and support people in increasingly complex situations.
A voluntary movement that started in earnest in the UK just over a decade ago, and which is still relies predominantly community groups and churches, is having to adjust to an increasingly central and semiformalised social emergency role as austerity cuts to welfare benefits and public services push the human consequences of poverty straight to their door.
Initially, food banks typically supported unemployed single adults and refugees, but in recent years the client group has expanded to include families and children, households in low-paid and zero-hours work and pensioners.
One respondent said: “Some of our older volunteers requested a meeting with me to explain that they are suffering in terms of their physical health and are mentally exhausted.
We decided that we would reduce our provision to a skeleton service over the summer to give the volunteers a break so that they can focus on their own wellbeing.”
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