THE number of food parcels given to children in Pembrokeshire has dropped slightly over the last year, whilst food parcels for adults has increased.

Trussell Trust has revealed its latest figures for foodbanks, with 1.5 million emergency food parcels being delivered to people between April and September this year across the UK. This is the most every distributed at this point of the year by the charity’s network, seeing a 16 per cent increase from the same period in 2022.

In broken down figures released by the charity, they detail the number of food parcels distributed across each local authority between April 1, 2022, and March 31, 2023. The figures for Pembrokeshire show that during this period, Trussell Trust’s five centres across the county provided 2,034 food parcels for children – a decrease of 104 from the same period in 2021/22 and a decrease of 267 based on figures from 2020/21.

Despite this decrease, the number of food parcels given out to children since 2018 has more than tripled, with the figure for the period in 2017/18 being 669.

However, the number of food parcels given to adults in Pembrokeshire during the period for 2022/23 is 2,996, an increase of 497 on last year’s figures but an increase of just 145 on the 2020/21 figures.

Many more people are turning to food banks, particularly those on low incomes or are struggling with debt, health conditions and issues with their payments.

The Trussell Trust believes that the situation is unlikely to change in the coming months with the new data causing them to predict that food banks across their network will distribute more than a million emergency food parcels between December 2023 and February 2024 – the equivalent of providing a parcel every eight seconds.

Helen Barnard, Director of Policy at the Trussell Trust, said: “It is extremely alarming to see the ongoing rise in the number of emergency food parcels for children across Pembrokeshire. An increasing number of children across Wales are growing up in families facing hunger, having to turn to food banks to survive. A generation is growing up believing that it’s normal to see a food bank in every community in our country. This is not right. 

“Sadly, we expect these numbers to rise again as food banks are bracing themselves for what is expected to be the toughest winter on record. We have forecast that food banks in the Trussell Trust network expect to distribute more than one million food parcels across the UK from December 2023 to February 2024.

“Rising hunger and hardship have devastating consequences for individuals and our communities, damage the health of the people of Wales, and hold back our economy. People in work, as well as people who cannot work, are increasingly being pushed into debt and have no option but to turn to a food bank. That’s why the UK Government must build on its work to protect people from increasingly severe hardship and commit to putting an Essentials Guarantee into legislation, to embed in our social security system the widely supported principle that, at a minimum, Universal Credit should protect people from going without essentials. 

“We are also urging the Welsh Government to do more to support people facing financial hardship, starting with developing a national plan to reduce and prevent the need for emergency food aid. Furthermore, the Welsh Government should ensure that the Child Poverty Strategy targets action on the children at greatest risk of poverty and includes metrics which capture people’s inability to afford the essentials, such as food insecurity, destitution and levels of need for food banks.”

In order to reduce these relentless levels of need, the Trussell Trust is calling on the UK Government to use the upcoming Autumn Statement to build on its work to protect households on the lowest incomes.