What is it about?
This article is about understanding how referring organisations involved in sending people to food banks make the decision over who to send.
Featured Image
Why is it important?
It questions the balance between the deserving and undeserving language of food bank use and food bank donations. How do referring agencies make moral judgements over whom they should send to a food bank for help, whilst balancing maintenance of donations from the public...do they want to be seen helping those seen by the public (donors) as less-deserving of help (for example, if they have spent all their money on drugs etc).
Perspectives
Hopefully, this article will add a critical dimension to current social policy questions being asked over food bank use, and, how we categories those whom are feel to be more/less deserving to use the food bank. Remembering that it is the public whom are responsible for making donations, referring agents have to maintain this thought process before they make referrals, as they fear that the public may stop donating if those who have made decisions to spend their money on items (seen by them) to be less essential.
David Beck
University of Salford
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: The moral maze of food bank use, Journal of Poverty and Social Justice, October 2020, Policy Press,
DOI: 10.1332/175982720x15905998909942.
You can read the full text:
Contributors
The following have contributed to this page
