'People would be going hungry': how a London charity is responding to coronavirus crisis
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Version 0 of 1. Volunteer Services Lewisham’s food delivery service is a lifeline to vulnerable people suffering under lockdown Brown bread. Baked beans. Tea. And would you happen to have any custard, dear? Some things stand out in the middle of the prodigiously energetic food-parcel line being run from a community hall in south-east London. Blue-top milk is still undisputed world No 1 around here. Processed dairy-based desserts are king. Anecdotal evidence suggests that even in the time of pandemic at least 85% of south London’s elderly women would really, really like to invite you in for a cup of tea and a chat. And then there is of course some heartbreak, too. Lewisham can look like a barely contained urban sprawl at the best of times. This is a London borough with a population just shy of Iceland, where a third of children live in poverty, and where the efforts of local charities to provide a food delivery service for vulnerable people is another understated human triumph of the Covid-19 shutdown. Acting on a hunch, Voluntary Services Lewisham delivered its first food parcel on 20 March, just as corona-fear really began to bite. By 24 April it was packing 200 parcels in a single day. Two thousand people are relying on a process conjured from a standing start at VSL’s pillbox-like town centre hall, known according to local myth as the first place Kate Bush sang live, and HQ now of a much-loved local charity set up in 1969 to care for the needy of the borough. Right now they’re operating in overdrive. “It’s new to us,” Stephen Oldfield, the deputy CEO, says. “The only experience we had of this was delivering Christmas hampers. So we took that operation and basically scaled it up.” “We took the view, get things done and find the process as it happens. The idea is, if you’re a person without food, we’re going to get you something.” And if they hadn’t done this, if they hadn’t just got on with it? “People would be going hungry.” Ten years of austerity have already hit Lewisham hard. The housing stock is densely packed. Households are cluttered. Throw in a virus that prays disproportionately on the poor, the elderly and black and ethnic minority people, and the notion of Lewisham without this safety net of interlocking charities is an alarming prospect. I volunteered with VSL in March to do some deliveries, one of 2,000 local people to join the borough’s concerted coronavirus response across an umbrella of charities. The food box circuit takes you through an urban landscape that has simply stopped. Driving west through the industrial shadows of Bermondsey, flattened by bombs and rebuilt by bulldozers, the deliveries take you into a maze of blocks and interlinking towers. Head south to Downham and Bellingham and the sky opens out into green suburban cul de sacs. Go north to Forest Hill and the streets are leafier and more grand, a high rise plateau above the city. The story is the same everywhere. VSL’s boxes are for self-isolating people running short of food: £15 gets you a mix of essentials, fresh stuff and high-yield carbs, topped with a chocolate bar, a frilly soap and the triumph of toilet roll. Alongside this are free boxes for those who have made it on to the NHS’s million-strong “shielded” list, the most vulnerable for whom staying inside is a matter of life and death, lockdown an ordeal on top of an ordeal. A safe delivery distance is kept at all times, although there’s not much you can do about security doors and lifts and cramped corridors. People wave from the window or shout through the front door. A middle-aged man hands out a fluent telling off though his surgical mask over the amount of time taken to answer the phone last week, in between saying thanks for the pasta sauce and bread. It is all quite reassuring. Then there’s the heartbreak. A frequent theme is dislocation and confusion. One shielded resident answers the pre-delivery call from a temporary address in the north, where she’s been forced to move by contagion in her old block. She can’t leave the house. She doesn’t have any food. She’s terminally ill. No one is coming to help. Or at least, not until now. There is of course an avalanche of lessons to be drawn from the crisis. Lewisham may not be a prosperous place, but it does at least have a structure, a network of care in place, and a sense of civic duty. Two things stand out. VSL has had to buy its own protective gear (one bulk delivery of masks still hasn’t turned up yet) but it has enough to go on for now, with gloves and hand-sanitiser stacked on every desk. No matter: keep distant, wash your hands a lot and get on with it. Secondly, and even more so now, the future is a daunting prospect. “We are expecting a lot more people to need help when this is over or as it goes along. People will just run out of money,” Oldfield says. As ever, charities, donations, volunteers and austerity-hit local government will pick up the slack. The lessons of Lewisham? “Wherever you are, find your interest and volunteer. It enhances your life. You don’t know where it’s going to take you.” • Coronavirus and volunteering: how can I help in the UK? |