As more and more people struggle with food and heating bills, the danger is that the services supporting them will collapse
When Family Action was established as the Charity Organisation Society in 1869, its aim was to find more effective ways to lift people out of poverty. After two name changes and more than 140 years of casework, the charity once again finds itself bearing witness to a daily struggle for survival. Every day, caseworkers encounter people struggling to meet basic needs, including parents reheating formula milk rather than pouring it away. This is the painful frontline of a cost of living crisis that is now threatening charities as well as the communities they serve.
Growing needs combined with rising costs mean some charities have never been more tightly squeezed. With councils desperately short of money, there is no chance of public sector contracts being uprated in line with inflation. Nor will shortfalls be made up by fundraising. A survey by the Charities Aid Foundation found that the number of people giving fell by 4.9 million in 2021 compared with two years earlier. The boss of the Charity Commission, Orlando Fraser, has described the situation as an “existential crisis” and criticised the super-rich for being less generous than a decade ago.
