Food banks are buying in counselling, fast-track GP and mental health support services for their staff and volunteers to help them cope with the stress and exhaustion caused by an explosion in demand for emergency food.
More than 2,000 Trussell Trust food bank staff and volunteers are now able to access a package of health and wellbeing support, including help with compassion fatigue, mental health first aid, face-to-face appointments with GPs and counsellors, and access to a helpline provided by the Samaritans, according to The Guardian.
A number of independent food banks have also bought in staff wellbeing services, the paper is reporting, with one charity based in the north-east of England about to start paying a private healthcare company to provide a 24/7 helpline and app-based mental health support for its “overwhelmed” staff.
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.
“We felt at the start of this year it was getting worse and worse for staff and volunteers. We don’t want to professionalise this, but we have a duty of care and we had to take action to protect our people. At the end of the day there is no food bank without our volunteers,” she said.
Cost-of-living crisis
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Sabine Goodwin, coordinator for the Independent Food Aid Network (Ifan), added: “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. Overstretched food bank teams are being expected to do the impossible.”
“Most of our volunteers signed up to give out food parcels and be a friendly face spreading some love,” agreed Su Parrish, operations director at the Easter Team food bank in Crawley, West Sussex. “They didn’t anticipate the level of stress that our clients now exhibit because of the situations they find themselves in.”
Last year the Trussell Trust’s 1,400 food bank centres gave out a record three million food parcels as demand peaked above pandemic levels, while a decline in food donations meant it spent £7.5m on buying food for food parcels. Record demand was also reported by the UK’s 1,200 independent food banks.
Staff can suffer from the “vicarious trauma” of working alongside vulnerable clients, many of whom are themselves hugely stressed and often unwell.
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