Grocery workers continue to bear the brunt of the cost of living crisis and retail crime, charity GroceryAid has warned, after demand for its services surged last year.
The charity delivered 139,000 incidences of support in the form of financial grants, legal advice and counselling over the past 12 months, a 76% increase on the previous year, according to GroceryAid’s latest impact report.
Record levels of retail crime and abuse have taken their toll, with a 147% increase in on-site critical incident trauma support visits from mental health first aiders. In addition, there were more than 12,300 calls to GroceryAid’s helpline, up 3% on the previous year.
Despite a swathe of pay increases across the sector, grocery colleagues continue to feel the bite of the cost of living crisis. There was also a 23% increase in the number of financial grants GroceryAid handed out, with 8,504 across the year.
It included the charity’s relaunched School Essentials Grant, which was used by 6,667 families.
Seperately, GroceryAid issued debt advice 15,200 times, a 151% increase.
While the figures make for grim reading at a time when the sector is under pressure, there are some positives, with some of the rise coming after GroceryAid was able to expand its services to offer more support.
It included moving June’s flagship Barcode Festival to a bigger venue in 2025, to London’s Kenwood House, enabling it to increase capacity to 6,000 people.
Overall it handed out £6.5m in support to the sector last an 8% increase on the previous year, according to the report.
“The Impact Report clearly demonstrates the rising demand across all our services,” said GroceryAid CEO Kieran Hemsworth.
“We are proud of the positive impact we have been able to achieve while the industry continues to experience a range of challenges.
“In the last 12 months, we have redefined our 2030 vision, purpose and values. We are looking to help grocery workers by providing relief in tough times and have focused on helping more colleagues through enhanced marketing programmes, adapted welfare offerings, and continued fundraising growth.”
Hemsworth warned that it was critical that more colleagues were able to access its programme of support, which is open to anyone that works within the grocery supply chain, stores, head office and other roles in the food and drink sector.
Currently, only around 23% of sector colleagues are aware of the charity’s services, he said.
“This needs to change and will be a key focus for us. At the same time, we must also ensure that we understand the changing welfare needs of those working in the industry and continue to adapt our offer to meet these needs.
“We are very grateful to the industry for all its support and hope that we can continue working together to drive widespread awareness of GroceryAid and its welfare services so that we can help more of our colleagues experiencing tough times.”
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