THE impact of public service cuts and the role faith groups play in tackling poverty in the UK will be assessed by Coventry University researchers.
A team from the university’s Centre for Trust, Peace, and Social Relations has now begun work on the Life on the Breadline project.
The three-year project will analyse how the age of cuts and austerity has affected church action on poverty.
The research, undertaken in partnership with The University of Manchester and Canterbury Christ Church University, aims to provide policy-makers with a clearer sense of the role faith groups can play in tackling inequality in the UK.
Teams will develop case studies on children’s breakfast clubs; lunch events for isolated elderly people; and foodbank use.
It will assess campaigns for a living wage, changes to Universal Credit and new approaches to social housing, homelessness and rough sleeping.
The Life on the Breadline team will lead a National Poverty Consultation to launch the project.
Lead researcher Dr Chris Shannahan said: “In the past ten years we have an exponential rise in the use of food banks and in the level of child poverty, which had declined in the previous decade.
“The Life on the Breadline initiative is the first theological project focusing on austerity in the UK and will develop new resources that will help Christian action on poverty to bring about social change as well as caring for the victims of austerity.
“Churches and faith groups have connections and relationships with marginalised communities that the government and councils just don’t have and as a result, they have become more and more visible in tackling poverty.”
More than 30 percent of children in the UK are now living in poverty according to the latest figures, and the number of food parcels being given out by the Trussell Trust rose from 28,000 in 2008, to more than 1.3million last year.
