Feeding Birkenhead is a coalition of churches, food
banks, community groups, and other organisations working together to eliminate
hunger in Birkenhead. It was established by Frank Field MP in 2014.
Here we explain the sheer range of activities
that Feeding Birkenhead has undertaken and is developing. This loosely
organised but highly effective coalition of local voluntary bodies operates so
that:
– Poor hungry families
are immediately helped
– These families can
permanently prevent themselves from being engulfed again in hunger
– At the same time
Feeding Birkenhead campaigns for its local successes to be spread across the
nation as quickly as possible so that all families similarly placed are helped
– The results of its
campaigns are developed in the national work that Feeding Britain plays in
eliminating hunger as we know it today in our country
Feeding Birkenhead’s programme centres on three main
projects, each of which is now being extended across the country by Feeding
Britain – the national charity to which we belong.
School
Holiday Meals and Activities
Feeding Birkenhead has established a project to
provide free meals and activities for children during school holidays. Over the
past three years, community groups in Beechwood, Central and North Birkenhead, Prenton, Rock Ferry, and Tranmere have provided this
service for a total of 2,000 children. Most of those
children receive free school meals during term time and would have been hungry
in the absence of the project. Much of the food supplied by the project is
sourced from local supermarkets’ surplus stocks which, while they are still of
good quality, would otherwise be wasted. Fun activities offered by the project
include arts, crafts, cooking, games, and sports.
School
Breakfast Clubs
Having found that up to a quarter of children in some
parts of Birkenhead arrive to school hungry each morning, Feeding Birkenhead is
helping local schools to set up and maintain breakfast clubs, by tapping into a
supply of breakfast products that are obtained by a charity called His Church
(many of those products would otherwise have been thrown to waste, despite
being perfectly edible). The equivalent of 156,000 breakfasts were distributed
to schools in March 2017 alone. At the most recent event in November 2017,
Feeding Birkenhead supplied 20 schools and community projects with enough breakfasts
to feed 1,400 children. Donations from the public enable Feeding Birkenhead to fund
the distribution to schools of fruit juice, fruit snacks, cereal, porridge,
muesli, jams and spreads.
Food
Bank Plus
Feeding Birkenhead has commissioned a joint project
between Wirral Foodbank and Involve Northwest, to prevent people from
experiencing prolonged periods of hunger. The project is delivered by a trained
benefits advisor who is on hand to resolve people’s crises during their first
visit to the food bank. Over the past three years, almost 1,000 people have
received help from Food Bank Plus and half of them have had their crises
addressed there and then, meaning they no longer had to visit the food bank.
Feeding Birkenhead has also brokered an agreement
between Wirral Foodbank and npower for the delivery of one of the country’s
first Fuel Banks. The Fuel Bank offers two-week credit vouchers for gas and
electricity to those people who would otherwise be unable to afford the energy
they require to cook the contents of their food parcel. Over the past two years,
more than 6,000 people have been helped by this project.
Feeding Birkenhead is currently devising two further
projects to prevent and relieve hunger.
Hot
food for the destitute homeless
Feeding Birkenhead is working with the local authority
to roll out a voucher scheme which enables the destitute homeless to receive
hot meals, alongside intensive support, at participating cafes. Feeding
Birkenhead has also provided Thermos flasks to dozens of homeless people, and organised
for them to have free access to hot water and sachets of soup or pasta. Alongside
this, Feeding Britain is campaigning to get the Ministry of Defence to divert
its surplus ration packs to the destitute homeless.
Feeding Birkenhead’s next moves
All
of Feeding Birkenhead’s moves are made to help poor and hungry families improve
their lot while at the same time using experience of working alongside these
families in Birkenhead to give a human face and new cutting edge to Feeding
Britain’s campaigns.
Citizens’
Supermarket
Feeding Birkenhead is setting up a Citizens’
Supermarket in the precinct to enable local families to buy their weekly
shopping at a heavily discounted price; and, alongside this, to provide advice
and advocacy on benefits, looking for work, debt, budgeting, and cooking, that
will build those families’ resilience against hunger. All of the food will be
sourced from food manufacturers’ surplus stocks, thereby preventing it from
going to waste.
Feeding Birkenhead has also begun influencing local
policy to deliver gains for individuals and families who would otherwise be
hungry.
Free
school meal registration
Feeding Birkenhead has successfully campaigned for the
local authority to use its Housing Benefit data automatically to register all
eligible children for free school meals. This policy led to 600 more children
being signed up for those meals, which triggered an additional £725,000 of
previously unclaimed Pupil Premium funding
towards their schooling.
All Feeding Birkenhead projects
and campaigns are linked into Feeding Britain so that, in this instance, other
local authorities can follow in the automatic registration of children eligible
for free school meals and thereby Pupil Premium funding.
Cooking
facilities
Feeding Birkenhead has successfully encouraged the
local authority to include the provision of basic cooking facilities within the
licensing criteria for private landlords seeking accreditation.
Early
Opportunity on Council Tax debt
Feeding
Birkenhead has successfully campaigned for the local authority to take a more proactive approach in offering vulnerable residents an
early opportunity to settle their Council Tax debts before they spiral out of
control.
As with
all of these initiatives the lessons learned from Feeding Birkenhead’s work are
helping to shape national policy.
Energy prices
Feeding Birkenhead demonstrated how
families on low incomes who use prepayment meters are asked to pay
disproportionately large energy costs, as well as a series of one-off charges,
which restrict their ability to afford food. Following our campaign, Ofgem implemented a
price cap on prepayment meters – saving the average
household up to £90 per year for the next three
years – and abolished almost all one-off
charges, to help level the playing field across the energy market.
Tax credits and Child Benefit
Evidence
from Feeding Birkenhead revealed how the transition between different types of
tax credit claim was triggering a period of months without money for some families,
during which they were at risk of being hungry. On the back of this evidence,
HMRC began piloting a new programme to enable the conversion of single tax
credit claims to joint claims over the telephone. In 2017, 55,000 claims were successfully converted in this way, with
the new payment processed in eight days, rather than the eight weeks it would
have taken under the previous system.
Further
evidence from Feeding Birkenhead demonstrated how delays in the processing of
Child Benefit could also cause financial hardship among families on low
incomes. A second trial programme has been set up by HMRC to counter this
problem, by digitally processing new claims where the parents do not include a
birth certificate. Many thousands of claims so far have been processed in this
way, when they would otherwise have been rejected and required a further
submission. The loss of birth certificates under the previous system, and the
delays this caused, had resulted in some families having to use food banks.
Benefit sanctions
Feeding
Birkenhead produced evidence showing how, in some cases, sanctions are used
against particularly vulnerable people whose behaviour should not have
warranted a loss of benefit – their bus may have
turned up late, or they had to take care of a close relative who had fallen
ill, for example, which meant they could not make it to a Jobcentre Plus
appointment.
The
Department for Work and Pensions accepted the recommendation made by Feeding
Britain, on the back of this evidence, for a Yellow Card warning system to
protect this group of people from being wrongly sanctioned. During an initial
trial period in parts of Scotland, over 500 people received such protection.
Feeding Britain is now encouraging the Department to extend the system across
the rest of the United Kingdom, beginning in Birkenhead.
Reformed Welfare Contract
Feeding
Birkenhead has partnered with Birkenhead Jobcentre Plus to help people on low
incomes make their limited resources stretch further. Once they have signed up
to the duties they need to fulfil while claiming benefit, people making a new
claim are informed of the support they can receive towards their utility costs,
as well as helpful Freephone numbers to call if they are struggling to pay
their bills. Over the past two years, more than 1,000 people have received this
information. Having shared this practice with central government, the
Department for Work and Pensions has confirmed that it will extend Feeding
Birkenhead’s Reformed Welfare Contract to
every Jobcentre Plus across the United Kingdom.
Who We Work With
Feeding Birkenhead consists of dozens of
organisations and individuals working hard to eliminate hunger in the town.
Among them are schools, GPs, supermarkets, the Beechwood Community Trust,
Charing Cross and Tranmere Methodist Churches, Bob’s Place, Citizens Advice
Wirral, FareShare, Magenta Living, St Vincent de Paul, Wirral’s Homeless
Angels, and:
The St. James Centre
North
Birkenhead Development Trust is a charity which runs a multi-purpose community
centre, The St James Centre in North Birkenhead.
The
Centre runs a year-round community
programme, including after school clubs for children, adult exercise classes, a
youth club, courses for young people around mental health and wellbeing, cooking courses for families, crisis support, food bank, debt and benefits advice, support for homeless people, a weekly social
supermarket called People’s Pantry, and lots more.
The
Centre offers meals and activities on every day of the school holidays,
supported by a wonderful team of volunteers. It also has a volunteer ran and
led charity shop, St James Opportunity Shop, which aims to provide affordable
access to clothing, household goods and more, as well as volunteering and work
experience for adults with additional needs.
344
Laird Street, Birkenhead
0151 670 9974
Eve Barrett – [email protected]
Wirral Foodbank
Wirral
Foodbank provides three days’ nutritionally
balanced emergency food and support to local people who are referred to them in
crisis situations. They act as part of a
nationwide network of foodbanks, supported by The Trussell Trust, working to
combat poverty and hunger across the UK.
Unit
14 Wirral Business Centre, Dock Road, Birkenhead, CH41 1JW
0151 638 7090
Richard Roberts – [email protected]
Wirral Play Council
Wirral
Play Council is a charitable organisation that provides a year-round service to
groups working with children. Every summer, Wirral Play Council organises free open-access
playschemes for children aged 6-13. It also runs an Additional Needs Group, consisting
of evening sessions and a Saturday morning session, each week, as well as daily
throughout most school holidays, for children with varying additional needs.
1
Berner St, Birkenhead, CH41 4JY
0151 650 0030
Bev Peters –
[email protected]
Involve Northwest
Involve
Northwest is a non-profit organisation, based in Birkenhead, offering a wide
range of services to help improve quality of life of local individuals and
families. The organisation provides services such as employment support,
welfare and benefits advice and domestic abuse support, with a key objective of
empowering and enabling local people through access to clear, concise
information and guidance through a high-quality service.
334
New Chester Road, Rock Ferry, Wirral, CH42
1LE
0151
644 1100
Eddie
Gowns – [email protected]
The Hive, Wirral Youth Zone
Wirral
Youth Zone, named by young people as ‘The Hive’, is a purpose-built facility for young people aged 8-19,
and up to 25 for those with disabilities. Young people from across Wirral have
access to fantastic facilities at a cost of £5 for an annual
membership and 50p per visit. The Youth Zone provides a safe environment where
young people can come and enjoy themselves and enables young people to raise
their aspirations and confidence to create a happier and healthier generation.
Bright
Street, Birkenhead, CH41 4EA
0151 705 8000
Adam Mellor – [email protected]
Neo Community
Neo Community is a
charity set up to fight against food waste and food poverty in the community. Through growing links with other community groups and
Lidl, Neo began to offer surplus food to community members, through the first
of Neo’s community food markets. Neo
prides itself on being unique with its approach by going out and listening to what
it is the community desires, which enables the creation of services that can be
moulded around local needs and challenges.
Beaconsfield
Community House, Rock Ferry, Wirral, CH42 3YN
07447 913888
Ema Wilkes –
[email protected]
Feeding
Birkenhead’s activities are co-ordinated by Andrew Forsey in Frank Field MP’s
House of Commons office, on 0207 219 6636 or [email protected]