This paper draws upon the concept of recreancy to examine the mental well-being of university students during the Covid-19 pandemic. Briefly, recreancy is loss of societal trust that results when institutional actors can no longer be counted on to perform their responsibilities. Our study of mental well-being and recreancy focuses on the role of universities and government regulators within the education sector. We surveyed 600 UK students attending 161 different public higher education providers in October 2020 during a time when many UK students were isolated in their residences and engaged in online learning. We assessed student well-being using the Short Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Well-being Scale (scored 7–35) and found the mean score to be 19.9 [95% confidence interval (CI) 19.6, 20.2]. This level of well-being indicates that a significant proportion of UK students face low levels of mental well-being. Structural equation modeling (SEM) analysis indicates that high recreancy—measured as a low trust in universities and the government—is associated with low levels of mental well-being across the student sample. While these findings are suggestive, they are also important and we suggest that government and university leaders should not only work to increase food and housing security during the Covid-19 pandemic, but also consider how to combat various sector trends that might intensify recreancy.

In response to the problem of holiday hunger, hundreds of local 'holiday clubs' have recently been established across the UK. This research examines the spatial relationship between income, childhood deprivation, ethnicity and holiday clubs across 32,844 Lower Super Output Areas (LSOAs) in England to determine if these clubs are currently operating in an inclusive fashion. Data on the location of holiday clubs comes from a national survey. Binary logistic regression results suggest that holiday clubs are likely to operate in economically disadvantaged areas. At the same time, clubs are not distributed equally by ethnicity. That is, holiday clubs operated by voluntary organizations are more likely to be situated in LSOAs that are disproportionately white and English\British and less likely to be situated in LSOAs that are disproportionately ethnic minority. This finding has important implications for the pursuit of holiday clubs as a policy mechanism for addressing access to food in light of the state's failure to adequately feed all of the country's children.

Holiday provision is a grassroots response to support low-income families during the school holidays with the provision of free food and activities. This qualitative study investigates the views of senior stakeholders (N = 15) who are responsible for facilitating or implementing programmes of holiday provision to determine the need for holiday provision, examples of best practice for delivering programmes of holiday provision and barriers for effective delivery. The findings identified a need for holiday provision as a result of cuts to welfare provision and local authority services which have increased pressures on household budgets. Senior stakeholders advocated a collaborative and flexible model of holiday provision and identified the need to utilize and develop existing community assets to deliver this provision, Yet, senior stakeholders acknowledged multiple barriers of delivery related to cost, sustainability and organizational capacity and, in the absence of a strategic response and sustained funding by national, regional and local governments, there are questions of whether this type of approach truly addresses and targets all of the most vulnerable in society.

The coronavirus crisis has shone a light on pre-existing social, economic and health inequalities. This article examines what has been done to support children who rely on free school meals and holiday clubs to access healthy, nutritious food

IntroductionDuring military service, many household costs for both married and single service personnel are subsidised, and transition can leave veterans unprepared for the financial demands of civilian life. Armed Forces organisations such as Sailor, Soldier, Air Force Association (SSAFA) play a central role in understanding the financial challenges that UK veterans face and provide an insight into the financial hardship experienced by veterans. The aim of this study was to use SSAFA beneficiary data as a proxy to identify the nature of financial benefit, the spatial distribution of financial hardship in the Scottish SSAFA beneficiary community and explore factors that might predict where those recipients are located.MethodsUsing an anonymised data set of Scottish SSAFA financial beneficiaries between 2014 and 2019, this study used a geographical methodology to identify the geospatial distribution of SSAFA benefit recipients and exploratory regression analysis to explore factors to explain where SSAFA beneficiaries are located.ResultsOver half of benefit applicants (n=10 735) were concentrated in only 50 postcode districts, showing evidence of a clustered pattern, and modelling demonstrates association with area-level deprivation. The findings highlight strong association between older injured veterans and need for SSAFA beneficiary assistance.ConclusionThe findings demonstrate that beneficiaries were statistically clustered into areas of high deprivation, experiencing similar challenges to that of the wider population in these areas. Military service injury or disability was strongly associated with areas of high SSAFA benefit use and in those areas high unemployment was also a significant factor to consider.