Guarantee Our Essentials
April 2022- March 2023: Close to 3 million emergency food parcels were distributed by food banks in the Trussell Trust network in the past 12 months — the most parcels ever distributed by the network in a year!
UK Roadmap to End the Need for Foodbanks
Earlier this month Trussell Trust released their end of year figures for the months April 2022 – 31st March 2023. During this period, Trussell Trust’s 24 centres across Cornwall distributed over 36,000 food parcels, of which over 13,000 were for children.
Unfortunately this is not the total number of food bank usage in the last twelve months. In addition to the Trussell Trust, communities across Cornwall are supported by a variety of independent food banks including those in Camborne, Hayle and St Ives. There is also food bank support from faith groups including Churches Together in Penzance, and Ocean Community Church in Bude.
Earlier this year, The Joseph Rowntree Foundation and Trussell Trust launched the Guarantee Our Essentials campaign. This campaign calls on the UK Government to enshrine in law the financial amount of Universal Credit needed to cover life’s essential costs. We know that there is a significant gap between living costs and the income Universal Credit provides, and rates are not calculated on people’s need, nor the cost of essentials, such as food, household bills and travel. This significant gap is drastically increasing levels of hardship and forcing people across Cornwall to access food banks.
During April, Transformation Cornwall attended Trussell Trust’s Rolling Roadshow in Bristol to connect with others from across the South West committed to ending the need for food banks. Participants from across the national Trussell Trust Network, discussed a wide range of topics including easy access to advice and support on money matters, an end to the cycle of money and mental health problems, and most importantly a social security system that supports us all to afford the essentials. Trussell Trust has also developed a road map to set out what they believe the journey to end food banks will involve; guided by justice, dignity, compassion and community.
The topics raised from the many conversations had at the Rolling Roadshow will be incorporated into community led campaigns that we will support each Foodbank with, listening to every Foodbank user about how we can look upstream to prevent people from experiencing poverty that results in them having to access emergency food provisions across Cornwall.