Crisis aid like vouchers and food eases acute need. But in desperate times, how do we turn the focus back to longer-term solutions?

With the latest Cost of Living Payments recently dropping into claimants’ accounts, the £299 boost will bring a much-needed reprieve for thousands of households.

Demand at foodbanks typically drops after payments like this one, which was the last of three made to claimants of Universal Credit and certain other benefits. For those who qualified for all three instalments, the payments totalled £900.

When the winter instalments were made at the tail end of last year, Trussell Trust said the dip in demand at its foodbanks equated to about 15 per cent.

But just weeks after the money hit bank accounts, demand was back up at its usual level.

Unsurprisingly, the payments – however welcome – don’t provide anything more meaningful than a temporary reprieve.

That, according to Trussell Trust director of policy, research and impact Helen Barnard, is unlikely to change as long as welfare benefits fall short of the level required for basic living standards.

“Social security should be there when any of us face hard times,” she wrote on the Trust’s website on 7 February. “But right now levels of payments are too low even to protect people from hunger.

“One-off Cost of Living Payments help some people to better afford food and other essentials for a short time, or to pay some of their bills or reduce their debt. But these payments cannot make up for an income that is just too low to get by, month after month.”

She called for the main party leaders to back an Essentials Guarantee – legislation to ensure that the basic rate of Universal Credit covers the cost of food, clothing and energy at the very least.

Building on a foundation of stronger social security, she said, enables people to thrive. It goes without saying that when someone lurches from crisis to crisis, finding a route to a more stable future is incredibly difficult.

A question of crisis

Crisis interventions, like payments, vouchers or grants, don’t always go hand in hand with more sustainable support like money guidance or healthy eating advice.

And even when they do, the very fact of being in crisis can leave people struggling to see beyond their immediate need.

Understandably, when someone needs a voucher to put food on the table or add credit to the meter, engaging with longer-term support is often much further down their list of priorities.

But without more sustainable support, everyone is stuck in the same old desperate cycle. And this applies to service providers as well as to service users.

Initiatives like Quids in! (run by Clean Slate Training and Employment) follow the ‘hand up’ model of support, offering guidance and sharing skills to help people live better lives on a low income.

That might mean helping a client to stretch their limited budget and increase their income by doing a benefits check, moving into work or finding better-paid work.

It works, but it’s not a quick fix. It’s a gradual fix, but one with lifelong benefits. Frequently though, support staff find that people just want the quick fix.

Crisis support often comes with strict conditions to ensure it’s directed to people in the most acute need. This can leave support staff assessing levels of hardship, and having to determine whose struggle is most desperate.

And as one Quids in! money coach commented, if one day she were to give out 30 vouchers, the next day she would have 60 people at the door seeking the same thing.

We do struggle to engage clients with the more comprehensive service, as a lot of them show up with a single purpose – to get fuel vouchers

Quids in! money coach

And there’s another hurdle to providing longer-term support – language.

“We do struggle to engage clients with the more comprehensive service we offer, as a lot of them show up with a single purpose – to get the fuel vouchers,” she says. 

“But considering the frequency of language barriers, there’s often very little space to have conversations about longer-term support, which then limits these clients to the fuel vouchers anyway.

“Additionally, with the language barrier in place, it’s hard for support workers to assess if the clients are struggling at all. This highlights the need for considering location-specific circumstances, such as demographics in densely populated areas, when these packages of support are drafted and dispensed. London projects could really do with more translators!”

With tensions sometimes running high, service users seeking crisis support and unwilling to engage with other help can become angry on occasion. That’s incredibly tough for staff, and for other clients who may be waiting in line. But such is the level of need in many parts of the country.

Digital exclusion can also hold people back from online booking systems, or even from researching the nature of the support on offer before turning up.

Good practice

Since 2021, the Household Support Fund has been offering discretionary support to people in dire need.

Managed largely by local authorities, the fund covers support services as well as grants paid directly to households.

The model has won praise from Policy in Practice, whose research found that since Covid, councils have been playing an “increasingly important role” in supporting struggling households.

And their findings showed this kind of local welfare support has most impact where it’s part of a holistic system of assistance.

This means looping in guidance and advice that can help recipients build solid foundations and leave them able to take control of their financial situation.

In recent months the HSF has funded Quids in! money skills sessions in Bristol and Stroud. Our UK-wide data shows that for every pound of funding the Quids in! service receives, we return more than £4 into the pockets of the people we support. That’s good news for the government.

But barring an announcement from Chancellor Jeremy Hunt in the Budget next week, the Household Support Fund will wind up at the end of March having paid out more than £2bn over the course of its lifetime.

Green shoots

But there are slivers of light. Another Quids in! money coach has noted that, after receiving crisis support like a fuel voucher, some clients have returned to her to access more comprehensive support.

She believes it’s due to communities gaining trust in the organisation. With language and digital barriers common, growing that trust can take a while but it’s a change she’s delighted to see.

The coach remembers a single mother, who came to her initially for a voucher back in January. But the meeting triggered a chain of support that ended with her securing a work placement for the start of March.

“This is just the tip of the iceberg,” the coach says. “As it’s so busy at the drop-in centre, I tend to forget to reflect on our outcome. I am reminding myself to reach out to clients when I can create the time.”

Image: Aaron Doucett / Unsplash