Martin Caraher Professor of Food and Health PolicyCentre for Food PolicyCity UniversityLondon EC1V OHBm.caraher@city.ac.uk+44 (0)20 7040 4161

•From Food Poverty to Food Banks: Examples of Successful Failures!

• Issues for measurement and measurement of what

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Things fall apart the centre cannot hold;Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimed tide is loosed, and everywhereThe ceremony of innocence is drowned;The best lack all conviction, while the worstAre full of passionate intensity

Measurement

• Faced with a policy problem and making sense of it

• Evidence of what?

• How to explain it?

Evidence into practice: a cycle of improvement?(as seen by UK’s Health Dev’t Agency now NICE)

Source: Kelly M, Spellar V, Meyrick J (2004). Getting evidence into practice in public health. London: HDA p 26

An example

The responsibility deal

The New Politics of Food

Sustainable food futures

Indicators of rising need

So w

hen

we

bega

n to

look

at t

his

Civil Society

Government Business

NGOs NGOs

Successful failures (Seibel 1989, Seibel 1996) • Seibel theorised that there were some challenges in society that

were both inevitable and unsolvable, although highly visible. These issues are troubling for a public concerned with social justice, and problematic for politicians who need to avoid blame for allowing such problems to exist

• Seibel argued that such problems tend to be of particular interest to voluntary organisations, keen to fill spaces where the state and the market may have failed and attractive to politicians as it allows them to shift the focus away from government delivering services.

• The involvement of civic society can thus be celebrated by politicians and the public alike, thankful that well-meaning others are addressing difficult issues.

• Meanwhile such celebration both reaffirms the importance of the work these organisations are undertaking, providing legitimacy to their efforts.

An example •But in contrast to welfare recipients who were ‘demonised’ and to whom categories of undeserving/deserving poor were applied this was not so of users of food banks

•Articles from -2001 food bank had to be explained but 2011 it was a shorthand for problems

So…..

• Seibel contends that as a result, management will construct their operations to ensure they have a continuous supply of sufficient and appropriate resources maybe even encouraging a new stream of users, even if the objectives of the organisation become compromised in the process.

• Seibel calls such organisations ‘successful failures’.

• Their voluntary or faith based nature made criticism socially unacceptable. There is a halo effect around such organisations doing good deeds.

The limits of evidence

• Seibel argued that such failure would never be acceptable in the public or private sectors where audits and accountability are sacrosanct.

• Therefore the ‘mellow weakness’ of the voluntary sector makes it the perfect vehicle for tackling problems that cannot be solved and in policy terms distracting attention from the underlying causes to the symptoms of the problem.

Area Evidence Classification

Success

Classification

Failure

Europe All-Party Parliamentary Inquiry into Hunger in the United Kingdom

(2014)

Van de Horst, Pascucci and Bol (2014) **

Lambie-Mumford (2013)

Silvasti and Karjalainen (2014) *

Garrone, Melacini and Perego (2014) **

Castetbon et al (2011)

X

 

 

 

 

X

X

 

 

X

X

X

USA Poppendieck (1999)

Winne (2008)

Poppendieck (2014) *

  X

X

X

Canada Tarasuk and Dachner. (2009)

Tarasuk, Dachner and Loopstra (2014) **

Saul and Curtis (2013)

Tarasuk and Eakin (2003).

Riches and Tarasuk (2014) *

  X

X

X

X

X

Australia Lindberg, Lawrence, Gold and Friel **

Booth and Whelan (2014) **

Butcher et al (2014) **

Booth (2014)

X

 

X

 

X

 

X

Some reflections• Evidence of what: process/doing something/media space

• Not outcomes!

• Volunteer engagement? Big Society arguments.

• The ‘product’ becomes the drive, that is not to say that the product creates need.

• Formal evidence is not enough we became aware of the need to address fundamentals of political positioning and social justice, this results in a tension between charity provision and the role of the state vis-a-vie rights.

• The social processes which frame the role of evidence within policy-making

Why should not Old Men be Mad?

Why should not old men be mad?………………………….And when they know what old books tellAnd that no better can be had, Know why an old man should be mad

References • All-Party Parliamentary Inquiry into Hunger in the United Kingdom (2014), ‘Feeding

Britain: Strategy for zero hunger in England, Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland London, Archbishop of Canterbury’s Charitable Trust

• Booth S (2014) Food banks in Australia. In Riches, G. and Silvasti, T., (2014) First World Hunger Revisited: Food Charity or the Right to Food?, 2nd edition, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, pp 15-28.

 • Booth, S. and Whelan, J (2014),"Hungry for change: the food banking industry in

Australia", British Food Journal, Vol. 116 Iss 9 pp. 1392 - 1404•  • Butcher, LM. Rose, M., Leisha C., et al (2014),"Foodbank of Western Australia's

healthy food for all", British Food Journal, Vol. 116 Iss 9 pp. 1490 - 1505

• Castetbon K. et al (2011) Dietary behaviour and nutritional status in underprivileged people using food aid (ABENA study, 2004–2005). J Hum Nutr Diet, 24, pp. 560–571

• Garrone, P., Melacini, M. and Perego, A. (2014),"Surplus food recovery and donation in Italy: the upstream process", British Food Journal, Vol. 116 Iss 9 pp. 1460 – 1477

• Lambie-Mumford, H. (2013) ‘Every town should have one’: Emergency Food Banking in the UK. Jnl Soc. Pol. (2013), 42, (1), pp.73-89

• Lindberg, R Lawrence, M., Gold, L and Friel, S (2014),"Food rescue – an Australian example", British Food Journal, Vol. 116 Iss 9 pp. 1478 - 1489

• Poppendieck, J. (1999). Sweet Charity?, Penguin Paperbacks.

• Poppendieck, J. (2014) Food Assistance Hunger and the End of Welfare in the USA. In Riches, G. and Silvasti, T., (2014) First World Hunger Revisited: Food Charity or the Right to Food?, 2nd edition, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, pp 176-190

• Riches, G. and Tarasuk V (2014) Canada: Thirty years of Food Charity and Public Policy Neglect. In First World Hunger Revisited: Food Charity or the Right to Food?, 2nd edition, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, pp 42-56.

• Saul, N. and A. Curtis (2013). The Stop: How the Fight for Good Food Transformed a Community and Inspired a Movement, Random House Digital, Inc.

• Silvasti, T and Karjalainen J (2014) Hunger in a Nordic Welfare State. In In Riches, G. and Silvasti, T., (2014) First World Hunger Revisited: Food Charity or the Right to Food?, 2nd edition, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, pp 72-86

• Tarasuk, V. and J. M. Eakin (2003). "Charitable food assistance as symbolic gesture: an ethnographic study of food banks in Ontario." Social science & medicine 56(7): 1505-1515.

• Tarasuk, V. and Dachner, N. (2009), “The proliferation of charitable meal programs in Toronto”, Canadian Public Policy, Vol. XXXV No. 4, pp. 433-450.

• Tarasuk VS, Dachner, N and Loopstra R. (2014),"Food banks, welfare, and food insecurity in Canada", British Food Journal, Vol. 116 Iss 9 pp. 1405 – 1417

• van der Horst, H. Pascucci, S. and Bol, W. (2014),"The “dark side” of food banks? Exploring emotional responses of food bank receivers in the Netherlands", British Food Journal, Vol. 116 Iss 9 pp. 1506 – 1520

• Winne, M. (2008). Closing the food gap: Resetting the table in the land of plenty, Beacon Press.

• Seibel• Seibel, W. (1989). "The function of mellow weakness; nonprofit

organizations as problem nonsolvers in Germany." The nonprofit sector in international perspective. Yale University: 177-193.

•  • Seibel, W. (1996). "Successful Failure An Alternative View on

Organizational Coping." American Behavioral Scientist 39(8): 1011-1024.