Thousands of working families forced to depend on charity handouts this Christmas
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Version 0 of 1. For 11 months of the year Rebecca Daly, 31, can just about make ends meet. But as Christmas approaches, it is much harder for the single mother of three children, from Sefton in Liverpool, who has epilepsy and is currently unable to work. The state benefits she receives cover her outgoings but there is very little left over for extras. “It’s really difficult,” says Daly. “I’ve just received a gas bill for £148 and I know there will be another one for the electricity arriving any day. Then the kids tell me about the toys and clothes they want for Christmas, it’s so hard when you know you can’t afford it. I try to keep costs down by turning the heating off when the kids aren’t here but they like it on when they get home.” This year, things will be made a little easier for Daly and her children as they will be among thousands of families to receive a hamper crammed full of food, festive treats, crackers and presents, from a local charity. Stephen Yip is the founder of Kind, a charity set up in 1975 to help disadvantaged families in greater Merseyside. Most years Kind provides around 1,000 hampers to local people, but last year was the charity’s busiest Christmas ever with 1,600 hampers handed out. “There is a consistent number of unemployed or desperate people who need our help, but recently we have also seen an increase in the number of people in work who are struggling to cope. Last year we were still making up emergency packages on Christmas Eve,” says Yip. Kind tries to make the hampers as special as possible. Around £60 is spent on each food package and families also receive presents and a basket of fresh fruit a couple of days before Christmas. Yip says that for many of the people they help this will be the only luxury they receive all year. “We do not buy any supermarket budget lines because we know this is the type of food these families survive on every day. I only order products I would like to be eating myself at Christmas,” he says. The number of people who receive a hamper is dependent on the amount of money raised from local people and businesses. Last year, the charity campaigned hard for extra donations, raising a record £52,000 in seven weeks. Yip says: “We know there are more people out there who need our help but we can only work with what we have. If we don’t raise enough funds, we can’t make the hampers.” Similar projects are run by charities in towns and cities across England. People are usually referred by local agencies or are already known by the organisations. All say they have seen an increase in the number of people needing help and it is a constant challenge to raise enough funds to meet demand. Wood Street Mission in Manchester has been helping families at Christmas for over 140 years. Since 2008, it has seen the number of people relying on their hampers rise by around a fifth each year. In 2013, more than 2,000 families – including 4,500 children – received food hampers and toys; up a tenth on the previous year. The organisation says high living costs and a reduced safety net for those living in poverty mean numbers are likely to peak again this year. Roseanne Sweeney, chief executive of Wood Street Mission, says it helps a broad and diverse group of people, including those who are recently unemployed, women fleeing domestic violence, and people living in entrenched poverty. “Christmas is a difficult time of year for the poorest families in society due to the expense and expectations of the season. Many children in low-income households are acutely aware they can’t have the same toys and treats as their friends. Our message is that Christmas should be fun and not just about survival,” she says. County Community Projects (CCP) in Cheltenham supports children, families and vulnerable adults across Gloucestershire. Ten years ago it joined forces with a corporate supporter to provide a Christmas meal for young homeless people. The charity says it realised many of the other people it helped during the year could also benefit from extra support at Christmas and as the project grew it began making hampers filled with food and gifts. In 2011, 136 hampers were given out to families in the local area, by 2013 the number had soared to 450. Chris Knight, CCP’s youth and workforce development manager, says he expects the number to rise again this year. “There are definitely more people who need help then there were a few years ago. It is extremely difficult to raise enough funds to meet that growing demand. We currently have collection points at 14 supermarkets in Gloucester and Cheltenham alone. It’s a huge task,” he says. The London based children’s charity, Kids Company, will send out over 12,000 food packages to the most vulnerable people in the community in the coming weeks, an increase of 200% since 2012. The organisation says static salaries, increased living costs and a rise in food and energy costs are all reasons for the steep rise. Recent research from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation shows that around half of all people in poverty are now from working families. Tom MacInnes, research director at the New Policy Institute, which carried out the research, says he is not surprised to hear of working families being forced to rely on charity handouts. “There are a number of issues coming together here. Low pay, changes in work patterns and more people working part-time hours all play a part,” he says. “People are not working as many hours as they need to, or are not paid enough per hour, to enable them to lift their families out of poverty.” The all party parliamentary group inquiry into hunger and food poverty this week reported that benefit sanctions and low pay are the main reasons poor people resort to food banks. Last year, Britain’s biggest food bank provider, the Trussell Trust, gave more than 100,000 people emergency food in December. It expects that number to increase this year as people are forced to prioritise between heating their homes and feeding their families. Many food banks are now giving out festive treats alongside standard food parcels. A food bank in Salisbury is providing fresh turkey with all the trimmings to more than 100 of the most deprived families in the area. Others will host Christmas meals. David McAuley, Trussell Trust chief executive, says nobody should ever go hungry, but facing hunger at Christmas is especially hard. “Increasingly, people surviving on low incomes are living on a financial knife-edge. For thousands of families, Christmas Day will not be about feasting and presents, it will be a struggle to put food on the table and there will be some children who wake up to no presents at all.” Daly says the hamper will allow her to fill her cupboards with enough food to last until January and give her children some presents to open on Christmas morning. “It is just brilliant, it really is. It will make such a difference to our Christmas and it means me and the kids have got something to look forward to.” |