penury

A charity called The Trussell Trust expects the number of people helped by its food parcels to grow by near 50% to 60,000 – including 20,000 children. The Trussell Trust has now spread to a network of 80 food banks across the country. The aim of the Food Bank is to offer a three days’ supply of nutritionally balanced, non-perishable food to people in crisis.

In the UK, 13million live below the poverty line, many are children whose parents are in work – in fact, 58% of the 3.7million children growing up in poverty belong to working families.

“Times are tough for many people. It used to be just the homeless going hungry, now its people from all walks of life,” says Molly Hodson from the Trussell Trust.

Even middle-class professionals are not exempt from hunger in this depressed economic climate. Every day people are going hungry; some are hit by redundancy, others by unexpected bills or have to contend with a non-living wage. Even people who would never be entitled to any benefit can find their fortunes suddenly reversed by a reduction in working income which leaves them unable to pay their mortgage and other bills and still put food on the table.