UK food banks bring in counsellors and private GPs to help exhausted workers

Submitted ⁨⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨Emperor@feddit.uk⁩ to ⁨unitedkingdom@feddit.uk⁩

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/sep/03/british-food-banks-bring-in-counsellors-and-private-gps-to-help-exhausted-workers

Britain’s food bank charities are buying in counselling, GP and mental health support services to help staff and volunteers cope with stress and exhaustion triggered by the explosion in demand for emergency food.

The wellbeing services are a response to a rise in burnout and stress among frontline food bank workers as they deal with expanding workloads and the emotional burden of supporting increasing numbers of destitute and emotionally traumatised clients.

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Emperor@feddit.uk ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
What messed up world we live in.

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bloopernova@programming.dev ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
How bad is it in the UK now? I haven’t been back for about 15 years now so I’m way out of touch.

I’m assuming leaving the EU really messed shit up :(

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- mannycalavera@feddit.uk ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  1 in 4 families need help with living costs, the economy has tanked, the air is so polluted that several cities are outright banning cars, no-one can afford to hire cheap staff so they have to either close down or increase wages, there’s a shortage of every type of avocado, and what’s worse is that we have to wait in the “… and others” line when we travel to Europe at immigration.
  
  Brexit has been an unmitigated disaster.
  
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- Emperor@feddit.uk ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  I mean Brexit is really just another symptom of Tory misrule.
  
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- brewery@feddit.uk ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  My cousin just came back from Australia and was quickly saying wtf is going on here. There’s lots of issues but also there’s s a crazy sense of despair all around. We’re normally miserable but not this miserable!
  
  I think the mood is bad because everyone knows we need rid of the current tories but (1) it’s probably at least a year away and (2) I’m not sure people are too happy with some of labour’s recent moves (they’re aiming for the middle ground and just saying nothing but it’s alienating traditional labour supporters) so there’s a sense they’ll be better but only because a clown using his feet to fire darts at a keyboard 10 miles away would govern better than this lot. This lot seem to care more about a rich person’s bank account, a couple of boats they’ve had many years to stop but can’t do anything about and trying a Nazi like scheme to send asylum seekers to anywhere but here
  
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  - Chariotwheel@kbin.social ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    
    I’m not sure people are too happy with some of labour’s recent moves (they’re aiming for the middle ground and just saying nothing but it’s alienating traditional labour supporters)
    
    Yeah, the Tories succesfully managed to shift politics to the right where everyone just tries to appeal to center right and further while left voters can only vote for the lefter of the parties.
    
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- FatLegTed@feddit.uk ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Bit of an understatement there 😉
  
  But we have our borders back, which is nice.
  
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vzq@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
P R O J E C T F E A R

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- Blake@feddit.uk ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  It’s not really entirely to do with Brexit. If the state didn’t actively want poor people to suffer then food banks wouldn’t need to exist, regardless of whether we’re in or not in the EU.
  
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  - vzq@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    At this point it’s hard to isolate the factors, whether austerity, Brexit, inflation due to the war in Ukraine etc.
    
    Still, it’s not exactly surprising that fucking up business with your largest trading partner has an impact on poverty.
    
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  - mannycalavera@feddit.uk ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    I think their point is that there is no need for food banks in the EU or something like that. To be honest I can’t understand what they’re trying to say 😂.
    
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  - FatLegTed@feddit.uk ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Sadly very true.
    
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autotldr@lemmings.world [bot] ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
This is the best summary I could come up with:

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.

Sabine Goodwin, coordinator for the Independent Food Aid Network (Ifan), said: “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.

A voluntary movement that started in earnest in the UK just over a decade ago, and which is still relies predominantly community groups and churches, is having to adjust to an increasingly central and semiformalised social emergency role as austerity cuts to welfare benefits and public services push the human consequences of poverty straight to their door.

Initially, food banks typically supported unemployed single adults and refugees, but in recent years the client group has expanded to include families and children, households in low-paid and zero-hours work and pensioners.

One respondent said: “Some of our older volunteers requested a meeting with me to explain that they are suffering in terms of their physical health and are mentally exhausted.

We decided that we would reduce our provision to a skeleton service over the summer to give the volunteers a break so that they can focus on their own wellbeing.”

The original article contains 1,122 words, the summary contains 241 words. Saved 79%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!

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