I manage a food bank... AMA!

[FoodBankManager]

Hi all,

I run a food bank as part of my job. We have recently opened up our community shop, too, which means people who have received emergency food parcels can pay £3 per week to choose items for 3 months to help them get back on their feet.

AMA!

I donate soap powder, reasoning that you get more washes for the money than liquid or capsules. Does someone have the whole box to themselves or do you split the box?

So we don't just offer the community shop membership, we also assess our members and look at why they are requiring this support, or the reason why they need an emergency food parcel. Some are in debt and we can support them to access debt support services, some struggle with managing their finances and we will arrange for them to go on a money management course, others might not be claiming everything they can do so we'll tell them about the drop in services we have (inc DWP & CAB) who may be able to help them, some members may 'waste' money by buying ready meals which are expensive because they don't actually know how to cook so we run basic cookery courses too. We also run accredited educational courses and back to work skills workshops to help people get back to work.

We'll never just dish out food, we look at how we can help the person/ the family to move on and not need our support.

Thank you, both for the work you do and for giving us the opportunity to learn more about it!

A couple of questions if that's ok;

• Do you/your service users prefer a higher quantity of lower cost items (e.g. own brand value tinned tomatoes) or fewer items of brand name/higher quality?

When I do food bank shops I tend to go for quantity, but have often wondered if users would prefer the brand name items as it might feel more luxurious?

• Is it useful to receive things like bags of sweets/lollies etc for users who might have children, or would you rather the money be spent on more useful items?

But what happens if they are still in financial hardship after the three months you offer?

Our emergency food parcels are generally only provided when clients are referred by an external organisation. I wouldn't let other staff or volunteers provide one without my say so, but I think I'm a good judge of character to be able to see the genuine cases, and we do know our local community and know who are genuine.

We know we'll get some non-genuine requests for both emergency food parcels and for our community pantry (we let people self refer) but actually it's a huge thing for most people to ask for support and I believe the vast majority of people are genuine.

Well done. X

Would you prefer shoppers donated items that don't require much cooking? E.g. a Fray Bentos pie looks like it would be great, but would the amount of time it would need in the oven mean no one would want it?

Also - how do we emotionally deal with this?

Well it's frustrating but equally we remind ourselves that we're doing the best we can and we help far more in genuine need than those who maybe aren't struggling as much as they make out.

How many people visit the food bank on an average day.

We are northern England. We are a completely independent charity, the food bank/community shop is just one part of what we do. They are run in conjunction, from the same room, but are 2 separate services run at different times - so emergency food packed are to be picked up between 10 & 12 on Tuesday mornings and 2 & 4 on Thursday afternoons, and put community shop is open 1-5 on Tuesdays and 9-1 on Thursdays to keep things separate.

We'll ask food parcel recipients if they want to sign up when they receive their parcel (I find most recipients only require one and don't need ongoing support), and many community shop members have received emergency food parcels in the past.

Do you get more donations at Christmas especially from businesses? I've seen a lot of Christmas appeals for donations to take to food banks and always makes me think why is this not all year round?

Thank you for all you do!
Our street started a weekly food and collection during lockdown and it's still going, though fortnightly now.
I always try to buy kids toothpaste and toothbrushes as it must be heartbreaking to not be able to brush your kids teeth.
The food bank tells us what they want each time and I usually go to Aldi/Lidl as I can get more for my money.
When they say "tinned meat" what does that mean?! Spam, tinned ham etc? I hate to ask as I feel snobby but don't know what's good!
And what's a good tinned fruit? I usually get pineapple or peaches.

Toiletries (deodorant, shower gel, bubble bath, toilet roll, tooth brushes, toothpaste, sanitary products, shaving cream)

Cleaning products (washing up liquid, wash powder, bleach, kitchen roll, foil, cling film)

Sanitary products are always something we allow people to take as and when and not included in the numbers listed above.

The community shop is great as we wouldn't put had cream in an emergency food parcel but sometimes people choose that as part of their shop!

Do you welcome pet food?

Have you noticed an increase in demand recently? If so, has this made it a challenge to provide enough supplies?

To go to the food bank who can refer a person? Can people ever self refer?

Sorry if this has already been asked!
would you be able to accept opened chocolates for example a minute of leftover roses/quality street/Xmas chocs not in their original packaging? I ask because obviously there wouldn’t be any export date or ingredients visible? I seem to have tonnes left over from Xmas but don’t want to burden my local food bank with them if they can’t make use of them? Thank you

What happens to items that are perfectly good but out of date?

Out of date items - We put anything out of date in a help yourself box, but we received some things from harvest festival donations in the autumn that were several years out of date (including pea and ham soup from 2017!) that we didn't want to risk putting out

Opened packets - last week we had an opened bag of crisps that had been taped shut 😬

Fresh produce - fruit/veg is fine, and we accept it no problem from businesses or other organisations, but we did have an individual try to donate some short dated meats they'd bought for cancelled NYE party that I couldn't accept as I obviously couldn't guarantee it had been kept properly.

It was like this for a long time, but actually since the cost of living crisis we've had lots of new people requiring support and I think there's less non-genuine cases slipping through.

How would you know though?

Just a huge big thanks from me. You are doing Trojan work

Thank you for everything that you do. I’m a children and families social worker and frequently refer for food parcels. It’s positive to hear that you provide additional support for people to prevent them having to keep obtaining food parcels.

In my experience it is often a long time before people are able to access such support due to being entrenched in poverty for such a long time, couples with mental health, additional stressors etc.

Sometimes when using a particular food bank I feel I have to jump through hoops and provide an unreasonable amount of information for people who I know well and have already made the assessment that they require a food parcel. There have been occasions where the person at the other end of the phone have refused to supply a food parcel due to their view of what a families benefits should have been spent on. I find do this upsetting because I’m often supporting families to manage a whole host of worries and risks alongside this. For a parent to phone me and tell me they can’t feed their child always makes me reflect on how they must view themselves as parents at that time, and it shows how desperate they are.

Sorry to derail your thread but I just wanted to thank you for what you do, not only providing an essential service but doing it without judgement and offering other services to those in need.

Be prepared they might be inundated with volunteer applications and not be able to offer you something straight away!

Think about why you want to volunteer - it would be good if you could commit for a good length of time as it takes a while to go through training and learn the ropes.

My job is volunteer manager so I sometimes get applications come in but have no space in their chosen area so try and find something different for them to volunteer in.

Thank you ❤️

It's been up and running a year and it's been a steep learning curve, and we're still adapting what we do, but I feel it's been really successful. I'm glad we got it set up before the cost of living crisis hit as we've definitely had a lot of referrals in recent months, and when we set things up it was a bit quieter