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Food Insecurity
Food Insecurity
We are measuring the prevalence and severity of food insecurity in our community so we can explore co-creation options for supporting people..
Food insecurity and family relationships: Impact of food support on parent child relationships during the cost of living crisis.
Food insecurity (FI) may be a powerful stressor that impacts on children’s development. Yet the parent-child pathway through which these effects are mediated remains unclear, which may limit the effectiveness of support programmes, such as the Household Support Fund, in mitigating the impact of the cost-of-living crisis on FI.
We used a battery of assessments to determine FI, mental and physical health and relationship characteristics of parents, and FI and relationship characteristics of children. Participants were segmented (using linear discriminant analysis) by the severity of their food insecurity and the efficacy of developmental support offered along 5 domains.
HSF, as an addition to other welfare programs, may prevent severe but not moderate food insecurity in families. Child FI occurred in 18% of households served by our HSF provision, usually because parents were less inclined to seek support and had larger families. Those children accessing HSF support experienced enhanced social and emotional competences, better parent relationships and greater academic control than a baseline sample.
Using this data a model has been developed where parents foster coping mechanisms amongst their children as they transmit FI, usually when their own buffering capacity is exhausted but also sometimes as a conditioning mechanism. Subsequently, increased resourcing and strength-based co-creation of HSF provision may be one way of reducing child FI further, but may have negligible impact on parent FI.
