At a church in east London on a cold winter’s day, Beautine Wester-Okiya picks up boxes of children’s clothes, toys and other supplies donated to locals in need. suffered the cost of living crisis in the United Kingdom.
It is the front line of something nurses with special needs could never have imagined before – catastrophic poverty in a developed Western nation.
Wester-Okiya, a Malaysian who came to Britain 40 years ago, told AFP: “I have never witnessed anything like this in my life in the UK.
It is a similar story of economic hardship 140km (87 miles) north of the central English city of Coventry.
In a giant warehouse, employees of the charity Feed the Hungry pack emergency food not only for children in Nicaragua, Ukraine and Africa, but also for families just a few miles away.
Britain is in the midst of its biggest price hike in decades, from fuel and heating to food and housing costs.
The crisis has put even greater pressure on food banks that have become a feature of modern life in the UK, prompting an effort to branch out into offering other services from children’s clothing to help with registration. sign the payment of benefits.
“We have mothers who want to commit suicide… we have kids who just got through a pandemic only to have this terrible cost of living crisis,” Wester-Okiya said.
“Broken mothers, broken homes, broken families. Mothers with depression; the children cry all the time.”
Over the past two and a half years, Hackney Children’s & Children’s Bank has made a concerted effort to help those in need.
Founded during the coronavirus pandemic, it has acted repeatedly in response to crisis after crisis, from migrants arriving in small boats with nothing to homeless Afghans and Ukrainians. reside.
But many of those in need now are people from the UK who have never faced such economic pain.
“We’re no longer just talking about migrants, we’re talking about middle-class people who have to sell their homes, people like teachers,” Wester-Okiya said.
Faced with an ever-increasing crisis – the UK now has more than 2,500 food banks – the children’s bank has expanded its operations to include older children.
Toiletries are in particularly high demand.
“A 14-year-old teenager wrote a terrible poem about how she was bullied because she couldn’t shower,” Wester-Okiya said. Piece.
In Coventry, a city once home to a thriving auto industry, the “crazy” cost of everything prompted single mother of four Hannah Simpson to visit a food bank for the first time.
Simpson, 29, whose youngest child is just 12 months old, skips meals to make sure she can eat.
But that certainly took a toll, leaving her feeling “tired and exhausted.”
“I try to hide my difficulties from them… but the other day, my daughter said at school: ‘I’m worried because Mom didn’t have dinner with us and didn’t have enough food to go’,” she said. she said.
“There is a lot of tension. I have four kids, I have to manage and worry and worry about where our next meal will come from.”
A 50-year-old woman named Tracy said the food bank has been a “savior” since she started arriving in November.
“My closet is completely empty. I ate one meal a day, just waiting for tea time every day,” she said.
Faced with a worsening crisis, Feed the Hungry, which operates Coventry’s 14 food banks and operates internationally, has launched a series of projects to help people cope longer long.
A project that teaches people to cook and make the best of what they have available is under development.
The “Pathfinder” project gives people the chance to buy £25 worth of food ($31) for a small fee, giving them back some choice and “dignity” and helping them continue access benefits and unclaimed benefit payments.
“It is working,” said project manager Hugh McNeill. “The only problem we have is that the demand is far beyond what we can actually provide.”
Those who walk through the charity’s doors “have no financial resilience whatsoever; they borrowed and they sold everything they had,” he added.
“You can go around the country and it’s exactly the same in every city and every town.”
For Wester-Okiya, the hope of building resilience is a long way off.
“My phone never stops,” she says, waving a smartphone that buzzes with texts and pleas for help.
“I have lived here for 40 years and as a nurse, I come into contact with families a lot. But last year was horrible, and I fear the next three months.”
