Food banks and mental health

That is interesting, actually.

One of the things that I've learned in the last 20 minutes or so is the sheer kind of diversity of types of food bank and the different work they do.

Yeah, but it's interesting to sort of to hear how much is achievable with food waste.

A question for both of you.

What next, really? What needs to happen now? Mohammed, do you want to start?

I would say that the key thing here should be that government should make policies that should act as preventive measures as compared to supportive measures.

Food banks, they are supportive measures and corrective measures, but they are not preventive measures.

Just like Helen said at the beginning, policies should be there that people, they don't have to come to food banks.

Helen, do you want to reiterate that point or add anything?

Yes, absolutely agree.

I think then the two ways that we practically achieve that.

First is ensuring everyone has enough money to afford essentials, which means improving universal credit and other benefits.

And the thing that we are really pushing for is to establish an independent process to advise governments on the minimum level of universal credit payments.

to move us towards the point where you've got a guarantee that the kind of basic rate of universal credit always covers the cost of essentials.

Because at the moment, universal credit is set with zero reference to how much you actually need week by week to afford your kind of basic essentials.

And the second thing around social security is, is thinking about the role of rents in driving people into hunger and needing a food bank.

At the moment, the bit of the social security system which is supposed to help people on low incomes with rents in the private housing sector is local housing allowance.

That has been frozen, which means you've got rents rising and this gap opening up again between your rent and the support you get with it.

And that gap means you have to basically dip into your food budget to try and pay your rent and avoid being evicted, which leaves you without enough money for food.

So unfreezing that local housing allowance and having a permanent link with rents would do an enormous amount of good.

And I think the other side is building supportive communities with a joined up network of services so people can get the right help at the right time without having to reach the point of going to a food bank.

So making sure in every community you've got debt and benefit advice, you've got housing advice, you've got places where you can connect with your local community.

and of course given the topic of today we have to get people faster access to mental health support we hear so often from food banks mental health is one of the biggest issues they see people struggling with wait times for support are so long and it's really hard to help people with work or housing or whatever if actually they're really struggling with their mental health and they're not getting support with that so that those are the things that i think could really move us towards the point where we don't need food banks anymore

I would like to say that to understand all of these dynamics, further research is needed, like for example, these accessibility issues and in which region, like for example, in London, there is need of food banks there, but people are unable to access there in London.

Employed people, they are using more food banks, but unemployed people, they are using less food banks.