Foodbank buying items from shops?

@SantaBakula thank you for the recommendation, very interesting.

Some of you mat find this episode of the food program interesting it's about how they work and the people that use them.
I particularly like the idea of mega banks , were not only food but clothing , hygiene, bedding, cleaning, plates , cutlery and other things most of us take for granted are either handed out or available to by at a tiny fraction of the normal cost
There are lots of really good initiatives like cafes , meeting centers , and in general lots of people that are working really hard to make food waste available to all them that need it
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m002694z?partner=uk.co.bbc&origin=share-mobile

I donate cash as they can get food discounted. Our food bank gets 10 cans of soup for the price of one.

a community fridge and a foodbank are very different. we are lucky to have a community fridge near us. they put in short date stuff, either donated or given by supermarkets, and fruit and veg. we have a local gleaning group that collects the veg not considered up to standard to sell that drop it off there too. and anyone can help themselves. it's round the back of one of the local petrol stations.

a foodbank doesn't have the same facilities. most things will be dried, jarred or tinned. some are able to offer fresh meat or veg, or frozen goods, but most can't.

@Auburngal food banks and community fridges are different things though.

On the few times I have visited the large community fridge - I don't go that often as its a 30 mile round trip, I go for other reasons. They have a fridge which contains things like cooked meats, some produce, such as mangetout. They have a small countertop freezer. From the few times I looked inside and from FB page photos, its usually Lidl's around the world frozen range. If Lidl (their store is a few mins walk) have a handful left of these ranges, they give these to the cf. Plus once there were some branded frozen pizzas which have been replaced by a shrunken size.

My sister works in a church that has a food bank. They also offer reduced/free meals for those in need. At Christmas we cooked and fed 85 people that otherwise wouldn’t have had a festive meal . She was inundated with people wanting to donate.a bag of carrots, 500 mince pies, a cheap beef joint for 4, a half a tub of cream etc. but the smoke truth is that in order to treat these service users with respect, you have to treat them equally and with a decent standard product. That can’t be done with 12 different varying quality joints of meat, 10 tires of potatoes and used by dates ranging from NO to 4 days out of date. The best way for us was to ask for volunteers so people could contribute time (peeling veg, plating up, arranging delivery routes, delivering) or for people to donate money so we could buy in a good standard of food that was all the same.

yes food banks take donations but they are also in reboot of various streams of funding to help run vans and purchase food, they are left bequests etc and supported by mayors charities, school collections etc. if they relied 100% on tinned/fresh donations then people would receive the most random and inedible variety of stuff ever. Like the autumn harvest in primary school, it was all 4yo tinned peaches, random dented Soup and corned beef missing the key opener. I always felt sorry for whoever it was being sent to .

Of the 400 who were referred to the food bank I volunteered at 3/4 are working. I’ve met lots of people working for Deliveroo, care home staff, teaching assistants even some nurses and once a junior doctor. People in expensive areas especially are struggling to pay their rent, heat their homes and buy food even when working.

right. I'd rather do good than harm.

nahhh. I hope they do. they need that eye opener.

I have never used a food bank and am lucky that when I was in need of food to feed me and my kids through no fault of my own that my parents often did a shop for us but without them I definitely would have needed to use a food bank, my point is that I also have no idea about the ins and outs of how food banks run on a daily basis but that doesn't mean I don't approve or agree with them.
Some right nasty shit stirrers on here implying that the OP is being goady and is really saying that she looks down on the people using them because "they can read between the lines and can tell this is what the OP really means"
People just make shit up on here and run with it

Charitable donations and fundraising.

They can't entirely rely on donations because they need a variety of different food groups.
You may be thinking of foodshares which distribute unwanted or almost out of date food discarded by the supermarkets. They just give out what they are given and many don't have any referral process, you can just turn up and pay whatever you can, if anything.

Especially if you were in emergency housing, and your only cooking facility was a kettle.

we were referred by the CAB, who also put money on our electricity key, and helped us with requesting a mandatory reconsideration of my husbands WCA that pretty much made out he wasn't disabled and should be working. the man can't even leave the house on his own without panic attacks.

you know most foodbanks don't have the facility to store fresh or frozen food. and not all foodbank users have the facilities or enough to spend on energy to cook fresh food from scratch, even if they're very good cooks normally.

I know if I was hungry, and it was a choice between a pot noodle and nothing, I'd be glad of the pot noodle.

lots of people using food banks DO work, and work hard, but are still struggling.
lots of other people using food banks are temporarily out of work, and need help to tread water until they're back on their feet.
and lots of others are unable to work due to disabilities.

I know that putting food in the food bank box feels like you are doing something tangible,cbut in reality, making a monthly donation is better. Not only does it mean that the food banks can buy what they want at a discount, you can also gift aid it.

Our Community Fridge receives excess items close to end date from shops and restaurants. Anyone who's prepared to queue can have a bag from them.

Our Foodbank is supported by local businesses and donations of both food and money. You have to fill in forms and be eligible to receive items.

Hope that helps!

At our food bank clients open the boxes and check the contents. Anything that is not suitable for/surplus to their needs is put on the help your self table.if it gets a bit full we take it back and re-sort it. About half goes back on the table and the rest ready to go in boxes.

This proves I think that people’s are not greedy and only take what they know they can use. We also have a sign up saying cans can be swapped for ring pul. We know that some clients do not own a can opener or do not know hoe to use one.

You sound like you really don't approve of them having the means to collect and, if needs be, distribute food?

Food banks get pretty significant grants from local councils as well as physical/financial donations from private individuals. The food parcels might be a bit random if it was purely down to donations of products

In fact, I absolutely agree with you on most of that. It’s a disgrace that we live in a society where private individuals and charities have to feed people in need. It’s a disgrace that our society is so geared towards making sure the rich get richer that people can’t feed themselves in the first place.

It’s also inevitable that any system which aims to improve people’s living standards will be abused.

The differences between our positions, I think, are these:

a) I believe in looking at the underlying causes of poverty, including the underlying causes of a person making what you call “bad decisions”. Lack of education, lack of prior experience of healthy financial behaviour, childhood deprivation, poor mental health, societal pressure to spend... These all factor in to what you call bad decisions. Those decisions don’t happen in a vacuum, and people who grew up in poverty or with other kinds of deprivation are less equipped to make good decisions.

b) I believe that a certain amount of cheating is inevitable because that’s human nature. While it’s best that the agencies involved try to mitigate it, it’s not enough to make me feel that my donations to foodbanks are wasted.

My experience is that the amount of actual fraud being perpetrated in these situations is usually vastly smaller than critics imply. But even if it weren’t - even if the chances of my donation reaching someone in “genuine” need were as ridiculously low as, say, 50% - that would be okay with me. Because it would mean that a full half of the time my donations would contribute to helping someone who has been treated extremely badly by life and by our society.

I don’t care whether you donate to foodbanks or not. You have the absolute right to decide whether to give charitably, and where your donations go. If you oppose them on principle, that’s completely up to you. I just disagree with you that the people who make “good decisions” and the people who make “bad decisions” are separated solely by individual character and choices. Our society skews people’s chances of ending up in one or other of those groups. Many (not all) of those in the “bad decisions” group are there because their childhood circumstances put them there.

@girlfriend44 Are you for real? What world do you live in?

Read this link, and you will find out from the start provider of foodbanks in this country how they work.

The Trussell group, who are the providers base of foodbanks, are an umbrella of the Christian church run by the local community churches on a non-profit making base.

You can not just turn up and get food. You need a voucher that is from a local service such as social workers, Dr, health visitors, etc.

As for seeing the same people going in and out, how do you know they aren't volunteers? You don't. How do you know the bags of food you see them with aren't being delivered to someone? You don't. Why the hell should people have to have out of date food

I could carry on. The message is clear - presumption is an opinion based NOT on facts you could research

www.trussell.org.uk/our-work/what-we-do/how-food-banks-work

No, it makes you judgemental.
It's nothing to do with being left or right wing either - many people with left leanings feel like foodbanks are just a sticking plaster.
Nobody has said 'the poor are undeserving', we've said that some people abuse the generosity of others and that more should be done so those genuinely in need aren't so reliant on food handouts to begin with.