Introduction

Schools and early years settings can be vastly different, with many variabilities between a nursery providing places for 30 children and a primary school which hundreds of children attend. This necessitates food bank provision on different scales and of different types. This chapter explores how schools supply food to families, including where food comes from and how it is distributed to families. We consider how schools use their knowledge of the local community to decide how food is given out, and the role of choice in affording families dignity. We also explore the ‘origin stories’ of the food banks, in order to consider in more depth why schools have decided to offer this provision.

Central to this chapter is the concept of policy enactment (Braun et al, 2011; Braun et al, 2012), mentioned in Chapter One, which emphasises the importance of context. We discuss how context guides the operation of a school’s food bank, even though a policy is not being enacted in the strictest sense. We see this work as similar to ‘crisis policy enactment’ where actions are taken due to need in a crisis, and argue that education leaders have been emboldened to respond to the needs of families following the Covid pandemic, when they often had to react in an absence of government policy (Bradbury et al, 2022). Thus, we see how the usual ways of understanding what schools do and why need to be adapted to understand this phenomenon.

How do food banks in schools work?

The standard model for schools operating a food bank was to have a set time and place, usually weekly, when parents could come in and take some food free of charge, without the need to produce a voucher which proved they were eligible. There were variations to this, as we will discuss, which were dependent on schools’ knowledge of families’ circumstances, the local context and the range of other services available; this underlines the position of schools as experts in the needs of local families, particularly in the aftermath of the Covid pandemic (Harmey & Moss, 2023; Bradbury et al, 2022). It is worth noting that the food banks varied considerably in size, with Rashford Nursery School holding a kitchen cupboard of food to give to families, while Rowntree Primary School received 700kg of food each week and distributed it to an estimated 50 families. The food pantry at Oliver Children’s Centre, as discussed, also operated on a different model, as an outside agency ran the food pantry at the site and at other children’s centres.

We look in this section at the two main elements of running a food bank – sourcing the food and distributing it. We include in this discussion some of the other goods that schools provided, such as toiletries and clothing, and discuss the ‘green’ agenda which was important in some cases.

Sourcing food

The school food banks sourced food through collaboration with food redistribution organisations, the use of apps that advertised surplus food, or donations from local businesses and even other families. The local context of the setting was important in determining where food could be sourced from, for example, whether the setting had businesses which could support nearby and how mixed the socioeconomic background of families they worked with was.

The majority of our case study schools received donations from food redistribution organisations such as the Felix Project, FareShare and City Harvest, with some schools given food by more than one of these charities. The Felix Project (nd) explains that their operation ‘rescue[s] good surplus food’ and delivers it to food banks for ‘vulnerable children and families, the homeless, the elderly and those who simply cannot afford to buy regular, healthy food’ (Felix Project, nd). Both City Harvest and FareShare function in the same way (City Harvest and the Felix Project in London and FareShare across the UK). Booth Primary School, Oliver Children’s Centre, Field Nursery School, Twining Primary School and Rowntree Primary School all used one or more of those organisations, with Lansbury Primary School using a similar local food redistribution charity. As we will discuss further, this helped to ease the stigma attached to the food bank in some cases, because they were reducing food waste.

In most cases, the organisation delivered food in vans to the schools we visited, but staff and volunteers at some schools collected the food. Andrea, headteacher at Lansbury Primary School, stated that she had a large car, so would drive to a distribution centre each week to have two or three pallets of food piled into the car boot. She outlined some of the challenges of doing this:

I would have literally had to go and root around and find what I needed. And also the physicality. It sounds so pathetic, but of one person – we’re a school. We don’t have spare staff to do this kind of stuff. At least I am not teaching all day every day. So actually, I can take an hour and a half out – even though it’s only in term – to go and drive there, park up, open my boot, get the two pallets. And it was all heavy stuff – tins – [to] get here.

Some of the challenges around supplying food to families are explored in later chapters, but the time, effort and sometimes physical exertion involved in operating a food bank should not be underestimated throughout.

One variation to this system was at Webb Primary School, where they used an app to collect surplus food:

We’re signed up to this thing called ‘Neighbourly’, which is a social platform thing … they also do the surplus food collection, so as soon as supermarkets come up, you can put your name down and choose or like whatever days they’ve got available. So we do Aldi, Lidl, Marks & Spencer and Getir, you know, the delivery thing. And then we have a bank of volunteers – parent volunteers. And off they go, they get the stuff, bring it back. (Genevieve, Webb Primary School)

This system relied on parent volunteers and some coordination, and so was only possible due to the parent body at Webb who had volunteered to collect food.

The very nature of the food that schools received – food which was surplus in supermarkets, restaurants, wholesalers and so on – meant that the type and quantities of food received varied week to week, with schools receiving little notice of what would be delivered to them. In some cases, this meant that schools could receive large quantities of one type of food which was close to its use by date, or there were problems with storing food such as frozen items safely. As Mark at Booth Primary School commented, ‘Some days you just get sent, I don’t know, 27 Spanish tortillas that are all going off that day’.

As well as these surpluses, schools could also be sent food which was not adequately nutritious or did not meet the needs of the community they served:

Today we got those big bags of Doritos, we won’t give the children the Doritos so they will go to the families or the staff … There is kind of a borderline because some of the yoghurts are very, very high in sugar so then you have to make an executive decision about is it OK for them to have it or shall we not, shall we just let the parents decide. (Abigail, Field Nursery School)

For Abigail, the food bank presented the additional obligation of deciding whether food was sufficiently nutritious for children to have access to it; she decides to shift the responsibility from the nursery school to parents. Through the food bank, Abigail has become gatekeeper to some foods for families, causing tensions when families had little food.

The cultural appropriateness of food was also a concern for staff in some schools, particularly those in large cities with a high proportion of children and families from minority ethnic backgrounds attending the setting:

If we’ve got meat donations Muslim families will only take halal food so that makes it quite challenging when not everything that comes in is halal … Sometimes Felix will send us some really random vegetables and our assumption was, well that’s OK Bengali speaking families will just use those, they will put those into curries, they will put those into cooking, it will be fine. But that was a massive assumption that isn’t totally true. (Michael, Booth Primary School)

As a result of this problem, Stephanie, food pantry manager at Oliver Children’s Centre, explained that in addition to their deliveries they also purchased more culturally appropriate food; Stephanie explained, ‘we have a real emphasis on the fact that our produce is culturally appropriate … things like apples and bananas don’t fit the bill for everyone’. Being ‘more diverse’, however, was also more expensive. There were also concerns in relation to the amount of fresh food; Helen, setting leader at Brown Pre-School, explained the problem of receiving a lot of tinned food: ‘It’s a tricky situation because obviously we don’t want to be ungrateful and say actually we’d really appreciate it if you started doing [fresh food], but we’re limited to what we can use from them … We just want them [the children] to eat well.’

In contrast, Grace at Webb Primary School felt that families were well served by the range of food they acquired through the Neighbourly app, explaining ‘microwave ready meals, we had loads of – that will be everything from a chicken korma to a full roast dinner’. Similarly, Audrey at Field Nursery School stated that staff were ‘really, really happy’ with the deliveries from the Felix Project and praised the flexibility and communication of the organisation. Overall, participants were keen to emphasise that they were grateful to receive any food to redistribute to children and families.

However, the nutritional value and cultural appropriateness of food for families are valid concerns and indicative of wider issues around a lack of choice of food for those living in poverty. As Caraher and Furey (2017) state, those on low incomes should be able to source food that is culturally appropriate, to their liking and of high nutritional value. No one should feel compelled to eat food they do not enjoy and is damaging to their health. Thus, while food redistribution was a key part of the operation of many of the school food banks, it was not without its problems. Notably, Felicity, who worked with schools at Felix, commented there was a waiting list of over 150 schools and ‘it’s massively increased this academic year’.

There are criticisms of the use of surplus food for distribution to those living with food insecurity; Riches (2020) re-labels this food ‘edible waste’ and argues that society ought to provide better, for example. There are also concerns that these systems benefit large corporations by reducing their waste bills and making them appear socially conscious (Power, 2022); however, we did not hear any of these critiques in our research, as staff were more focused on the problems with the quality and quantity of food.

School staff also told us how a range of local businesses, including supermarkets, charities and even other families at the setting, provided donations. Here, again, we see the importance of context (Braun et al, 2011) in acquiring food, for often it was the serendipity of a school’s position that allowed for food to be gathered in such a manner. In some cases, supermarkets provided grants and some direct provision of goods to schools, but several other organisations also helped:

We have the big supermarkets that are also our support, as well … We have the church. They are really good when giving us donations, as well … We are connected to a large bakery company, our local factory here, and when they put donations out in front of their factory they’ll give us a call and say ‘Right, we’ve put a load out,’ and I normally jump in my car and shoot down there and get some fresh bread for all of our families. (Lesley, Peabody Primary School)

Lesley’s comments demonstrate the importance of context for schools: where they were located, the businesses surrounding them and the overall food environment influenced where food could be procured from. In contrast, Helen at Brown Pre-School described how families struggled to access their nearest supermarket. Thus, the local contexts in which schools operated shaped their response to families’ need for food, but also guided their decisions about how to acquire food.

There were some other organisations which helped with the provision of food, including charities. At Brown Pre-School, where they had few local food providers, they receive help from a more distant organisation called Vitamin Angels, which was one of the most surprising providers of food. Vitamin Angels is a non-profit organisation based in California, who describe their role as ‘working to improve nutrition for pregnant women, infants and young children’ by bringing ‘essential healthcare to underserved communities’ (Vitamin Angels, nd). The charity supplies prenatal vitamin and mineral tablets, and their website showcases their work through videos of women and young children across what appears to be Asia, South America and Africa. However, Vitamin Angels were also supporting Brown Pre-School in the North of England: Helen explained, ‘the nurseries said don’t give vitamins give fruit, vegetables, it will help the schools, it’s an easier way to feed the children … so we get a weekly Tesco haul, and for each child we get five fruit, five veg, and three protein’. Thus, at Brown Pre-School and also at Dimbleby Nursery in London, Vitamin Angels provided fruit and vegetables both for school meals and so that surplus food (predominantly tinned fruit and vegetables) could be taken home. This reliance on charity is indicative of the move from government-provided welfare to assistance from charities and other organisations (Lambie-Mumford, 2017). However, the involvement of an NGO whose aim is to support public health in ‘underserved’ communities through providing nutritious food to nurseries in England is nonetheless surprising and indicative of the severity of need in some areas.

Another source of donations to the food banks were other families attending the school or from other provision within the chain of nurseries, and in some cases, school staff. At Dimbleby Nursery, they benefitted from revenue raised by a nursery in a more affluent area within their chain, to support the food bank. Through a quiz night and a raffle, they raised £600 for the food bank. Others discussed the donations to the food bank they received from other families attending their own school, such as at Peabody Primary School, where Lesley commented, ‘Our parents are amazing.’ Again, this was highly dependent on the community the school served, as Gita at Wilson Nursery explained, they were able to support the unit next door for young mothers and babies as ‘[m]ost of our families are affluent’. At Webb Primary School, where the parents were involved in the food collection, the diversity of parents was key to their provision: Grace and Genevieve discussed how one family offered them a £1,000 donation which they ‘earmarked for more vouchers’, while another family were ‘in dire straits’ at a Christmas event. This mix of socioeconomic status among parents was highly significant in this school, as it allowed the food bank and these additional events to function. In contrast, at Booth Primary School, asking for donations from the families was not possible due to widespread poverty, with few parents able to support the food bank. Headteacher Michael explained, ‘we don’t feel that we’ve got enough families with the money to be able to make the donations’. The importance of the situated context is again relevant with regard to the families attending the schools. The local community at Michael’s school is a double disadvantage for them – Michael needs to provide more support because of the position of the school in an impoverished area and simultaneously does not have wealthier parents to draw on for assistance.

Finally, at Rashford Nursery School, staff funded the food bank. Naomi explained that ‘we’ve got mixes in the families, we’ve also got mixes in the staff’, but staff recognised they were better off than many families. Again, the context is important, as with early years practitioners working alongside qualified teachers (as required in a maintained nursery school), some staff were earning a high enough salary to be able to donate to the food bank, while other members of staff needed support themselves.

Reduced donations due to the cost-of-living crisis

Whatever the source of their food, with the cost-of-living crisis impacting many families, including some of those who were considered more affluent, some schools commented on reduced donations. The manager at Wilson Nursery explained, ‘We have noticed in the past month or so that there is less donations’, so they were trying to find new sources of funding.

Even schools which received deliveries from one or more of the food redistribution organisations sometimes reported a reduction in the amount of food donated. Stephanie at Oliver Children’s Centre noted that increased demand means ‘the amount is having to be distributed out further’. For some, this meant having to reduce the amount of food they could offer, such as at Dimbleby Nursery, where Brenda explained, ‘We are not getting as much funding as we used to get.’ This caused issues with the parents, as we see in Chapter Five. The decrease in the amount of food available in the food banks highlights one of the difficulties of such support, which is that it is contingent upon individuals or organisations being willing and able to provide it. As Lambie-Mumford (2019) attests, a problem with food charity is that recipients of it have no right, and there is no guarantee of the provision.

Distributing food

Schools used a range of strategies to ensure food reached families in need, based on their in-depth knowledge of the communities they served. This was central to understanding how overt or discreet they needed to be in approaching families who may have needed support and when supplying food, they appreciated the complexities involved and the power relations. As Strong argues, ‘acts of producing, disseminating and consuming food demonstrate how acts of power become embodied – how the quantities, qualities and types of food provisioned shape vitality and vital capacities and capabilities’ (Strong, 2019, p 2, emphasis in original). Here, we explain how schools made the decision to target families or not, before describing how food was then provided in practical terms.

Identifying families in need of support

For some schools, there was no targeted approach; the food bank was widely advertised and families were free to attend and collect food whenever it was needed. This form of universal provision to all school families was often advertised via the school newsletter. Some schools opened the provision up to all local families, as at Rowntree:

We open the doors at 2:45pm to any families at all. It’s not referral basis or anything like that. It’s absolutely anybody. And because I’m not using my school budget, I’ve never been precious about it having to be school families. The vast majority are, but we do have some that are just around about in the estate, or they might have heard at other schools. (Charlotte, Rowntree Primary School)

The food pantry at Oliver Children’s Centre was also widely available, with the only limitation that it was for families and pregnant women:

We advertise anywhere and everywhere really. We’ve got a strong social media presence. We have a weekly newsletter … we don’t do targeting. We also try and avoid any kind of terminology and language that implies that our service is for people that are in need. (Stephanie, Oliver Children’s Centre)

Stephanie went on to explain that although the pantry was targeted at ‘families who have children under the age of four and pregnant mothers’, ‘we tend not to discriminate in that if we have other people that turn up and need food, we’ll still serve them’. At Booth Primary, they also opened up the food bank to the local community, but it was more common among our sample to focus on the families of children attending the school.

For several schools, there were informal ways of targeting support. For example, at Lansbury Primary School, while the food bank was mentioned in the newsletter, other staff usually pointed parents to the support:

They [parents] know about it because occasionally we put it on the newsletter, and it’s word of mouth … My [learning] mentor talks to them. And also, we’ve got a small attendance team. So obviously, they work quite closely together. So if the attendance team are making phone calls and they go, ‘We’re really struggling, Andrea. We just can’t get …’ – that all feeds into the same thing … We try and say, ‘Look, if anybody is struggling, just phone and we’ll see what we can do to help.’ But there’s only a finite amount of food, so that’s really difficult. (Andrea, Lansbury Primary School)

This form of targeted support allowed the schools to focus their finite resources on those families most in need. This was one of the key advantages of the food bank at a school, that staff were able to identify who needed support. The headteacher, Michael, at Booth Primary explained: ‘I think as schools we can do it in a dignified way, we can also identify the families. The food bank almost relies on a self-referral in a way, whereas we can target the families and we can signpost and target the right families.’ This knowledge of the families was vital in the operation of the food banks, and as we see in later chapters, was also strengthened by the relationships built up during visits.

A slightly more difficult issue was the role of the class teacher in identifying children who needed help; these teachers see the children more regularly, but may not feel as comfortable highlighting welfare concerns as the school attendance officer or a family support worker, for example. One teacher explained how it worked at Twining Primary:

We also, as a class teacher, if I identify somebody … for example, I had a child come in recently … they are really on the breadline. So Sarah [head] didn’t know anything about them, we didn’t have any communication with the other school and [they] moved around a lot. But they needed to access the food bank, so it’s kind of we’re referring them and vice versa. She’ll come up to me sometimes and say, ‘Have you heard anything, what’s happening there?’ Because more information about a family, the better. (Sophie, Twining Primary School)

Staff thus exchanged details regarding children’s learning, attendance and safeguarding factors to build a more complete picture about the family and whether they needed support from the food bank; this became part of the general support for families. Similarly, at Rashford Nursery School, Nicola explained how children presenting as hungry would sometimes alert them to which families needed help: ‘Some parents are quite embarrassed about it. So if we’re sitting down and we’re taking note of the children, how much they’re actually eating, so then we can say to the parents, “Do you need a little bit of help? We can help you.”’ The role of food in the nursery school, where children eat in the presence of staff, enabled staff to identify who was hungry. This is a difference between schools and early years provision, which makes it easier for those working in nurseries to identify hungry children.

Some schools targeted food at families who had requested support. Again, these systems had been developed with an understanding of local families, and were perhaps enabled by the wider discourse around the cost of living:

The plan is that they send an email into the office and all it has is ‘School Support’ in the title and that’s it. And then, myself or one of the Inclusion Team would ring that parent and say ‘We’ve got this email through. This is totally confidential, what can we do to help?’ … Normally, once you get to know your family, there is a lot more you can do for them but they just don’t want to ask straight away. So it’s about building that relationship with our families, knowing what their need is. (Lesley, Peabody Primary School)

We’ve found over this winter that parents come to us and it’s almost like, ‘Oh, I’ve got no food in the cupboards now.’ We hold food bank vouchers, so we do refer to the food banks locally … But also, we say ‘[H]ere’s a couple of bags of food to keep you going over the next couple of days until you can get to the food bank.’ (Naomi, Rashford Nursery School)

Naomi and others at Rashford Nursery School highlighted the close relationships between staff and parents that enabled families to reach out for support in that way. At Peabody Primary, Lesley discussed how ‘proud’ the families were and how many of them were reticent in asking for help, which was the basis of the email system set up at the school through which families could ask discreetly for food. As we discuss throughout our analysis, the issue of avoiding stigma was important in how food banks were organised.

The different approaches that schools took to identifying families in need and their different numbers of children led to vast differences in the numbers using the food bank. At Rashford Nursery School, the headteacher described providing food parcels to five families, whereas at Rowntree Primary School there were approximately 50 families using the food stall each week. Most staff stated that between 25 and 35 families attended a weekly food bank. This is greater than the number found in a similar study conducted by Baker (2023), which possibly indicates the increase in poverty and food insecurity. As Baker observed, a deep comprehension of the families they worked with enabled staff to tailor food aid to their needs, with an understanding of the shame and stigma sometimes associated with food bank use (Purdam et al, 2015; Beck & Gwilym, 2020).

Ways of distributing food: choice and dignity

As noted, attending a food bank is deeply stigmatising for many users, and key decisions about how the food bank is organised help to alleviate the shame and indignity of receiving free food. Choice is key to a sense of dignity and normality, supporting users to feel like other consumers who can select the food they wish (Garthwaite, 2016a). Most schools established the food bank in a manner that allowed parents to peruse products and select those appropriate to their own needs and likes:

It’s like going into a shop. They go round and then they take what they need and it’s nice, and it’s done very – ‘subtle’ is the wrong word, but they’re not there in front of everybody. Some schools with the Felix, they put it out on tables in the playground. This is very discreet – that was the word I was looking for – this is very discreet, because our parents are quite proud and to ask for help, it’s taken a long time for them to develop that trust and get that relationship going. (Sasha, Twining Primary School)

It’s in the mobile classroom on the other side of the Year 6 classroom … we used to have it out as like a market stall out the front there, and kids would come round and come and see it and stuff … We advertise it in that way, and it’s just you know, ‘Come along and bring a bag.’ (Catherine, Rowntree Primary School)

This approach, these school leaders decided, was the most appropriate for their communities. At several of the early years settings, the smaller-scale provision was always open. Dimbleby Nursery chose to position their food bank in an entrance way, ensuring that families could utilise it at their discretion when taking children to and collecting them from nursery. Similarly, at Brown Pre-School and Wilson Nursery, food was positioned to aid access and the food bank was always open. These settings provided choice of both what to take and when to take it, as well as attempting to maintain some discretion. This was possible usually due to the smaller number of families involved.

In primary schools, parents typically enter the buildings less than in early years settings, usually dropping children off outside a classroom, and this meant that some schools had to find other ways to be discreet. Twining Primary School had gone to great lengths to ensure that the families using the food bank were not seen by teachers or other staff, using a separate entrance:

So we have a room that’s set up downstairs, ready to go, and the way it’s positioned, it keeps confidentiality. Families find that very difficult because staff may see them coming in and out, and they don’t necessarily want their child’s teacher to know that they’re struggling a little bit, for whatever reason. So the way that it’s set up, it helps to keep that confidentiality. (Sarah, Twining Primary School)

Again, the material context of the school was central to them being able to supply food in this way: Twining Primary had a room available for the food and other items to be placed in. Other interviewees also spoke of the space they had available, often thanks to empty classrooms due to falling rolls or children’s centres that had lost funding, to facilitate the food bank being operated in such a way.

The provision of choice was not always possible, and some provided food parcels prepared by staff. This was typically the case in schools where the food bank was smaller or used on a more ad hoc basis when parents requested support:

I might need to have a private conversation with them and say ‘Look, if you’re ever in that situation, you just let me know and you can have a bag that day.’ We normally give something like a shower gel or soap or some kind of deodorant or something, we would do pasta, soup, vegetables, a pudding, some biscuits, normally a drink like squash or something like that … And we also try and put something in that they could make together so like a fajita pack … Or baking; we’d put cake mix in or something like that so that they can do something together. (Lesley, Peabody Primary School)

Us having food on-site means if we even get a sense of, like, they’re struggling, we literally put food in a bag and say, ‘Look, take that home.’ (Naomi, Rashford Nursery School)

Further limits to choice were sometimes due to the finite amount of food and the need to ensure everyone was provided for. This could be a cause of significant stress for staff, and resulted in strategies to give parents quotas for how much they could take:

There was this one day we ran out. It was horrific. So then we were – I was literally stood there and there was hardly any – there was like some green beans and just – it was awful, and we weren’t even halfway through the queue. And hungry people can be angry people as well … So we do now have signs on some things that say, ‘Two of these. Three of these’ … But if we’ve gotten well through the queue and it still looks like there’s quite a lot left, I just shout at everybody, ‘Come back round again.’ (Charlotte, Rowntree Primary School)

Similarly, at Oliver Children’s Centre, they had limits on each item; Stella explained: ‘They say, “Can I have two cucumbers instead of one?” I said, “No. One for everyone.”’ These descriptions of restrictions to ensure fairness indicate that choice can be limited even within a system that promotes it. The issue of choice relates to dignity here, as some families are told they cannot have two cucumbers, for example, making this a very different way of accessing food.

A final alternative strategy was to operate the food bank as a ‘food club’ or ‘food pantry’, where parents paid a fee to join and/or a set fee for the food. This was the case at the food pantry element of the provision at Booth Primary, and a similar strategy was used at the food pantry at Oliver Children’s Centre, where for £2.50 parents could choose five portions of fruit and vegetables and then five other food items. The manager explained that ‘we pride ourselves in being able to give people the choice and selection’, but as we have seen, there are limitations on that choice. But many families on low incomes are used to lack of choice; as Garthwaite comments: ‘For people coming to the foodbank, though, choice is not something they are likely to be used to’, as they have no choice about their benefits or lack of transport, or surviving on ‘cups of coffee or tea laced with sugar in place of meals’ (Garthwaite, 2016a, p 79). This removal of choice from people takes away their agency and sense of dignity (O’Hara, 2015; Garthwaite, 2016a); these schools were attempting to alleviate this loss through various strategies. We return to the attempts to reduce stigma in Chapter Five.

Non-food provision

At all the case study schools, it was not simply food that was provided, but a range of other goods, to varying extents. Most of the staff informed us that they also supplied hygiene products to families, often supported by external organisations:

We now also receive support from the Hygiene Project. So we have a hygiene bank as well, so just deodorant, soap, basics, toothbrush, and toothpaste. We’ve definitely over the last six months noticed a real increase in the number of families that are using it and are coming in and asking for certain things, like toilet roll … We were speaking to one of the mums who told us that she goes into McDonald’s each day to take toilet roll, because she can’t afford toilet roll at home. (Bethany, Dimbleby Nursery)

We’re trying to constantly make connections with other charities as well, for example, like Bloody Good Period [a charity providing period products]. We’re trying to make connections with them as well, so as well as having those food pantry resources we also have other things. We’ve got some soaps that they can use as well so it definitely does help. (Gabrielle, Wilson Nursery)

The inclusion of sanitary items at Wilson Nursery demonstrates the extent to which the support was for the family rather than the children, as these were goods clearly not needed by the children. Bethany’s comment also reveals the very real need for these products among families who are struggling. Clothing was also often provided to families:

It started off as non-perishable goods and then we added on the toiletries and then we added on the clothes. And then we had a TA who, basically, had all these brand-new coats, didn’t she, that had never been worn that her neighbour had donated to her from a shop. (Lorraine, Peabody Primary School)

We’re going to make a clothing bank because we get donated a lot of clothes, so I’ve got this idea, it’s in progress, that if they want to parents can donate clothes that their children have grown out of which will go into the clothing bank and then they can access bigger clothes. (Abigail, Field Nursery School)

Most of the clothing and shoes offered were for children, although some food banks had adult clothing too. Other household goods were sometimes provided:

The main source of clothing now is from my 84-year-old parents who are very active in their church. And everybody at their church says, ‘Oh, we’ve got some stuff for Andrea’s school.’ And they’re coming today at 12:30 to drop off a load, for example. And that is everything – toys, plates, dishes – basically people have clear-outs and they donate it. We do get a few other donations of bags of clothes and staff will do it a little bit. (Andrea, Lansbury Primary School)

So word has got out though that we will take household goods. The only thing I don’t take is electrical items, because I can’t get those checked. (Sarah, Twining Primary School)

Baby equipment was also commonly distributed: for example, at Peabody Primary School, a range of items for families with babies and household goods were placed in a cupboard alongside the food. Again, this reveals how support goes beyond helping the child, and extends to the whole family. As we see in later chapters, the provision of certain items such as clothing and shoes was significant in helping children living in poverty to participate in school life.

The ‘green’ agenda: cloaking poverty?

As mentioned, for some schools, the need to provide a food bank to alleviate food insecurity and hunger among children and families was accompanied by a desire to support sustainability. Most were very keen to avoid food waste and, in some cases, described going to some effort to ensure the food that was delivered to their setting was used:

One of the things we also try is to reduce food waste as much as possible here, so if there are things left over at the end of distribution we will look at what we can then use to cook with in the school kitchen, or then it will get redistributed. So I will often end up with either I bring my car here or someone will drop it at my house and from there I distribute from mine to a number of foster families that live near me or some other homeless projects and so on. There is an added bonus in that the food that’s left over from our food pantry then always gets to another good home elsewhere, or staff will use it, I’ll use it, whatever, to make sure it doesn’t go to landfill. (Michael, Booth Primary School)

I am quite environmentally conscious so I do enjoy kind of using vegetables that sometimes are given to us and most people would go, ‘Well that’s unusable’, and throw it in the bin. (Greg, Wilson Nursery)

This desire to avoid food waste was not a dominant feature of provision for most of our schools, as most were solely focused on alleviating food insecurity; it was simply another thing to bear in mind. For others, the sustainability agenda supported them in encouraging families to use the food bank:

At first they didn’t really want to take it they were like, give it to somebody that needs … and we’re like ‘Either you guys take it or it’s going to go in the bin’, and they’re like, ‘If it’s going to go in the bin we’ll take it.’ (Audrey, Field Nursery School)

I feel like it’s a bit different these days, like people aren’t as ashamed. Because we also sell it as though ‘come and save the planet’. (Genevieve, Webb Primary School)

Presenting use of the food bank as a means to avoid food waste and therefore promote sustainability encouraged more families to take food in some of the schools visited. At Webb, this was an important part of the food bank, as the food was collected from supermarkets and the entire enterprise was painted as a ‘green’ project. The model of the food redistribution charities is to highlight the benefits for the environment alongside the improved wellbeing of food bank users. The Felix Project website calls attention to the fact that it saved 34,021 tonnes of carbon dioxide from being emitted into the atmosphere in 2023, as well as distributing enough food to provide 32 million meals (Felix Project, nd).

However, it is important to consider if emphasising such gains for sustainability obscures the problem of food insecurity and poverty. Baker (2023) discusses the way in which schools presented food charity as a ‘food pantry’ or ‘community shop’ to minimise food waste and therefore avoid the stigmatising term ‘food bank’. Caraher and Furey (2017) argue that linking surplus food and the reduction of food waste to resolving food insecurity and hunger means that full attention is paid to neither and that neither goal is achieved. Furthermore, it removes the political impetus to focus on the problem of food insecurity: ‘There is evidence from other countries that the use of surplus food for emergency food aid “depoliticises” hunger and allows governments not to address the gap between income and food costs’ (Caraher & Furey, 2017, p 1). We return to this issue of depoliticisation in Chapter Six. We now turn to the reasons why families were using food banks.

How did food banks in schools start?

Understanding how the food banks in schools developed is key to conceptualising them as a response to poverty. We focus here, as mentioned in Chapter One, not on the reasons why child poverty has increased, but more on the reasons why schools have begun to help. Our case study schools discussed setting up a food bank in response to the impact of one of three challenges – the austerity policy during the 2010s, the Covid pandemic in 2020–21 or the cost-of-living crisis from the end of 2021 onwards. Notably, the typical pattern was that food provision was set up either before or during the Covid pandemic, but that schools had recently seen use increase due to the cost-of-living crisis.

While the Covid pandemic drew attention to the issues of child poverty and food insecurity, austerity measures taken by successive governments between 2010 and 2019 were a major factor, as discussed in Chapter Two. Field Nursery School, Twining Primary School and Booth Primary School had all initiated a supply of food for families prior to the pandemic. Staff in those schools all described piecemeal provision that was widened when Covid hit:

Before Covid we were working a bit with the Felix Project and we were doing some real ad hoc food distribution, a little bit here and there each week. Felix would bring a donation in and we’d distribute it just in the playground but not to any targeted audience and just it was a very small amount so we didn’t really recognise that as a great need. And then when Covid came the need became more and more apparent. (Michael, Booth Primary School)

So pre-Covid, so say 2019, I had seven families that were using it regularly, and most of those were no recourse to public funds, so they were caught in the immigration system … then that first big lockdown we had, that trebled literally overnight. (Sarah, Twining Primary School)

For these schools, what had been identified as a key need in the 2010s increased during the Covid crisis. Many of the schools that started a food bank due to the impact of the pandemic described doing so at the beginning of the first lockdown, with the supply of food to families a primary concern:

It started with Covid. So the day that Boris Johnson said he was closing schools, we closed for one day and only one day completely, because my very first fear was about food for our families, before learning and before anything else. So after one day our kitchen staff and one or two other staff agreed to come in. And this is really early days when it was very frightening and everything, and we just baked lots of jacket potatoes and we had cheese and tuna and things. And we went out and we put a table across the school gate and just said, ‘If anybody needs lunch, anybody in the family, it doesn’t matter how many, just come down and get a jacket potato.’ And that was the very first thing, and it grew from there. (Charlotte, Rowntree Primary School)

During the initial lockdown, the Inclusion Team and the headteacher got together and we had to come up with a solution for our families who were really struggling and we decided to create the food bank. So I’ve been part of that since it was first created and it’s just ballooned. (Lesley, Peabody Primary School)

So the [name of organisation] was set up during Covid. We have partnered with [organisation] who had identified a need within [area] and they wanted to be able to support their communities through food better. So that’s where we started from. We started initially by doing home deliveries for people, particularly pregnant mothers, and it was grocery bags particularly with fruit and vegetables, but we were also doing a meal prep service … From there, our pantry model was then curated and we’ve grown and grown since then. So we’ve now got five. (Stephanie, Oliver Children’s Centre)

This growth during Covid mirrors survey results showing that, in the first two weeks of lockdown, 20.8 per cent of families with children experienced food insecurity (Food Foundation, 2024) compared to 11 per cent between 2016 and 2018 (Sosenko et al, 2019). These comments echo those collected at the time which emphasised the prioritisation of food for many schools (Moss et al, 2020). Many of our participants referred to the loss of employment for many parents as the reason for this increased need for food provision, reflecting research on low-income families during the pandemic (Patrick et al, 2022).

Some practitioners who we spoke to stated that they initially believed the food bank would be a short-term measure to support families during Covid, but the cost-of-living crisis from late 2021 had seen the level of need within their communities continue or even increase:

We had a lot of families that lost their jobs over Covid, were made redundant so we didn’t have the foodbank, our kind of food poverty at that time so we ended up using another local foodbank provider to help support families with that … It seems to be worse now than it was then. I think it’s just crept in, it’s crept in slowly and then all of a sudden we’ve had a huge boom, it’s always in conversation with parents, everything is so expensive, food. (Helen, Brown Pre-School)

I started in September 2021 and the store started here about six months before that, and it’s been gradually building since then. Not dramatically but gradually I would say … Cost of living is going up. Cost of energy, and food in the supermarkets, and markets has gone up. So, people struggle to afford it. (Matt, Booth Primary School)

Similarly, at Oliver Children’s Centre, Stephanie commented that ‘numbers have gone up’ due to the cost-of-living crisis. At Dimbleby Nursery, Bethany noted that ‘people that wouldn’t have been accessing the food bank this time last year are now’; while Mark, head chef at Booth Primary School, commented on the extra food he needed to order due to increased demand. Sarah, at Twining Primary School, explained how numbers had ‘trebled overnight’ due to the first lockdown, but went on to say:

2021, it started to go down again because obviously things started to open up, once families went back to employment … It started to go up in the October ’22. We started to notice that I was getting sort of like two or three more, then three or four, then five or six. It’s not been a massive jump, all in one go. It’s been spread out over the last few months. But I’m up to between 30 and 35 at the moment. (Sarah, Twining Primary School)

This figure of 35 was compared to seven families needing support before the pandemic.

For some, the cost-of-living crisis was the trigger for opening the food bank. At Webb Primary School, they had previously provided support to families in the form of vouchers during Covid: ‘We put a thing out to parents saying, “Hey, we realise the cost-of-living crisis. We’re doing this thing. If anybody would like to be on the list to be alerted when we have surplus food, let us know.” So we’ve got a list of about 20 people.’

The experiences of those interviewed correlate with research stating that food insecurity peaked after the Covid pandemic, with 25.8 per cent of families affected in September 2022 (Food Foundation, 2024). As noted, the emergence of the cost-of-living crisis in the summer of 2021 coincided with the removal of the £20 a week increase in Universal Credit payments, a policy which in itself is believed to have resulted in 350,000 more children living in poverty (CPAG, 2023). The headteacher at Rowntree Primary explained how her school had tried to reduce the frequency of the food bank following the pandemic, only to find that the demand was still as great:

We’d gone to fortnightly. Once we really were sort of, well in educational terms anyway, over Covid and everything else was back to normal, and Ofsted were back on the agenda and testing and everything else, it was like, ‘Right, we can’t do this every week. It is A) exhausting and B) time consuming. We’ll just do it fortnightly.’ Oh, no. I think we only managed a few weeks doing it fortnightly before we realised that ‘No, the need is there.’ (Charlotte, Rowntree Primary School)

As well as overall continuing need, there was a recognition that food insecurity was no longer the reserve of those families with parents who were not working, and that even those who would previously have been considered wealthier were affected by increasing costs and interest rates:

So many single mums that are working in schools that can no longer – as I say, they’ve got two dependents on one income and then – or maybe three dependents, or four. And then you’ve got one income, and then you’ve got your utilities and your food costs. It’s a real kind of hot – even if you are a teacher or a doctor or a well-paid job, that’s not going to work anymore. (Grace, Webb Primary School)

And the other big thing I’ve noticed is some of it is working families as well, it’s the part-time families and the single mums and single dads, they’re the ones that are coming forward a lot more now than would have been before. (Audrey, Field Nursery School)

These comments reflect a wider concern with in-work poverty, and the growing proportion of families struggling during the cost-of-living crisis. There were also concerns about families who had been affected by the unexpected nature of the cost-of-living crisis:

Even if you’re really wealthy, you’ll still struggle because we didn’t know this was coming, this cost-of-living thing. And people might have over-mortgaged themselves. Like I do see these people pulling up in their big fancy cars and coming to the food bank, but it doesn’t mean that they don’t need it. Because they probably took out that loan or something before all of this happened, or they might have lost their job or whatever. (Genevieve, Webb Primary School)

A final sign of the impact of the cost-of-living crisis and another reason to run the food bank was the number of school staff using the food bank. Many discussed the discreet measures they took to supply colleagues, mainly teaching assistants and cleaners, with food and other items to support them. This was justified by the need to keep healthy staff in some cases:

We’ve got staff that are struggling. We’ve got staff on minimum wage so as much as we want to help the children and families we do give our staff a lot of food, leftover milk at the end of the week, because they’re just – we need to keep them healthy and in the right frame of mind to support these children. (Helen, Brown Pre-School)

There are a couple of staff members who are really struggling as well so I normally keep a bag of food to the side for them and then give it to them very discreetly to support them as well. (Abigail, Field Nursery School)

The use of the food banks by staff, particularly those in support roles, is perhaps unsurprising given the low pay. In 2019, prior to the Covid pandemic, it was estimated that 14 per cent of nursery staff were living in relative poverty, with roughly 3 per cent needing assistance from food banks (Crown, 2019). Staff use did, however, cause some tensions, as at Rowntree Primary and Wilson Nursery they had to ask staff to take food after the parents otherwise there was not enough, suggesting a high level of need among those working at the school. The difficult decision that leaders made to prioritise families using the food bank demonstrates the emotional cost of running a food bank in an education setting.

Conclusion

This chapter has set out how the food banks in school operate in terms of sourcing the food and distributing it, and the extra clothing, toiletries and other non-food items that schools offer. We have also discussed the green agenda which is present in some schools and explored the reasons why schools first set up food banks in response to record levels of child poverty (CPAG, 2024). Throughout this chapter, we have seen how context matters in the operation of the food bank, in terms of local population, size of buildings, needs of the families and sources of food. How schools perceive this context is also vitally important in understanding how they operate a food bank. This discussion cannot be seen as analogous to policy enactment, however, as the schools are not required to offer a food bank. In fact, they are responding, as we argue in Chapter Six, to an absence of policy. Nonetheless, we can see these actions as similar to ‘crisis policy enactment’ during Covid, where education leaders responded to the needs of their communities in the absence of government policy (Bradbury et al, 2022), prioritising welfare and basic needs, such as food. This leads us onto the discussion in Chapter Four on the benefits of the food bank for both families and the school, and then in Chapter Five to a discussion of how leaders are guided by a moral and ethical obligation to support families in need. We would argue that, for some schools, responding in a more autonomous way to the community during the pandemic has emboldened leaders to meet the needs of children and families in the cost-of-living crisis, regardless of government policy. But this does not entirely explain the continuation of food banks or the ones that began pre-Covid; instead, we need to take into account the wider responsibilisation of civic society and charitable organisations for food insecurity, and include schools within this discussion.