Foodbank for the Summer Holidays

[GloGirl]

The summer holidays might be a financial stretch for a lot of families who are losing out on their child's breakfast clubs and free school meals for lunch.

Just a thought for people to donate to their local food back and add in a few items that would be appreciated by children in the summer.

Posting in AIBU for traffic - so feel free to debate the topic whilst I am here!

ClashCityRocker, I get a food bank parcel every week. Loads more than three times a year. I don't want to argue, but I also don't want anyone who needs it put off getting them, in case they worry they will be in worse need later on.

LBOCS do you know where in the ocado checkout process I can add items or a donation? I have used only a few times so far but must have missed this, would be good to do thnx

Trussell Trust food banks say 3 times in a 6 month period as they are for crisis use only, although this can be a wee bit flexible obviously. The holiday schemes are different, the referral process is more lax and on the whole a letter will entitle the bearer to a package of staples each week.

lex - Newsagent and Entertainment > Gift Experiences and Vouchers > Donate Food with Ocado.

giving food to vulnerable children is a bad thing

Giving food to vulnerable children is not a bad thing. Foodbanks however do not give food to children. They give food to adults who have made bad choices and as a consequence are not feeding their children. Why should they spend their money on food when the nice people at the food bank will sort them out again?

Foodbank use is supply driven - there are more foodbanks so more people use them, rather than being need driven as some would have you believe. Lots of media coverage, people think "let's start up a foodbank!" and you get newspaper headlines about how the number of foodbanks is drastically increasing.

The government thinking on this needs to change - children from affluent families do not need a free lunch in their first three years at school. That money could be diverted to provide lunches for vulnerable children year round.

Agree Luna - I wasn't sure if that was just Scotland so didn't like to say re the FSM for P1-3.

Also if they weren't trying to feed children who don't need it there would be money to make the free meals more nutritious and the portions for older children adequate as at the moment they get the same as a 5 year old when they are 11. I'd also support a facility for free breakfasts and lunches to be available in the holidays.

Thnx essential it's quite buried, shame it is not on one of the endless checkout pages, I even put Foodbank in the search and nothing came up

Luna, you are another one being judgemental. Thanks for that.

Read my post above, in what way have I made mad choices? Apart from trying to get a degree and career later in life and not managing to do that? Which was not my fault!

The Benefits system is designed to provide a basic standard of living. Disability and sick benefits are there for those genuinely unable to work and quite right too. Lots of people have mentioned sanctions - asking people to turn up on time for appointments or apply for a certain number of jobs is not a bad idea at all. I do think there are a lot of people who have got away with doing very little for a long time. The whole debt thing is a difficult one though - are people giving to foodbanks happy that they are really paying someone else's debts as the money that could have been spent on food is going to creditors? People who most probably are watching the pennies themselves.

I just don't buy into the media hype about foodbanks and how the fact there are so many more of them is some sort of reflection on government policy. There are more foodbanks because there are a lot of people setting them up. If there is a foodbank, it will get used.

You are demonstrating a fundamental lack of understanding about how they work tbh.

Luna, nobody is paying my debts but me and my DP, thank you very much. We get a much appreciated food bank box, which helps alleviate the pressure just a little bit. The people who donate, do so willingly. It is not enforced, as tax is. I hope they don't begrudge us the same way you clearly do.

Erm... Foodbanks don't only give food to those on benefits or who are in debt!

You may not buy the media hype but please, believe me, our greatest client base over the last few years has been families who have had wages coming in, who have been made redundant, had a financial catastrophe, and are struggling to make then last pay packet stretch to the next.

Whilst we do help over the long term (not a Trussell bank) a large % of our clients only need us a couple of times and are what you might perceive to be middle class, good earners. They are, until they get hit with something they just can't stretch to - something many people who live from pay packet to pay packet live in fear of, and those with a small amount of savings aren't resting easy either!

You have a lot of misinformation about who uses a food bank and why!

Food banks also help those who have been put in dire financial straits by those around them. Like a woman my DF's food bank helped, whose husband had cleared out their accounts and left her after 20 years of her being a SAHM. Takes a while to process benefit payments or a divorce settlement and you still have to eat in the meantime.

People are setting up foodbanks because of the growing need. I have friends who set one up because more and more of their neighbours did not have enough money for food, because of benefit sanctions.

I really don't want to come across as goady, but it cannot be denied that a lot of feckless parents who DO get enough benefits just do not prioritise their children's food. Surely food comes before TV, internet access, mobile phones not to mention fags/booze/lottery tickets etc - yes, there are exceptional circumstances when people need extra help, but it shouldn't be the norm, not in this country at least. I donate to the local food bank, and am glad to do so, but whenever this kind of topic comes up I can't help but think about the argument for giving food stamps as part of benefit payments.

Whilst I don't disagree with you in some ways gingham I don't think that in itself solves the problem as the stamps then become currency too or it would be argued that it's discriminatory etc Young children would be oblivious but older children/teens would feel stigmatised by shopping with vouchers etc and given the work that is put into them not being stigmatised with their FSM it would be a backward step.

There always have been and always will be feckless parents and it's natural to not want to indulge that behaviour, but we can't take it out on the children and we have to hope that with each generation the fecklessness will decrease. I'd like to see decent education programs for money management and cooking etc to try and catch some of the younger people before they get into bad habits or pass these onto their children.

There really has to be a better way.

DS has a GoHenry card which is effectively a pre-pay debit card which we reload online. There are some restrictions on where he can use it - IIRC vendors have to be whitelisted - but it's accepted at our corner shop for example.

The possible stigma and definite inflexibility of food stamps must definitely be an argument against, but I think in some cases a prepaid VISA debit type card could have merits. However, in those cases one would hope that there would already be SS oversight and support from other agencies.

are people giving to foodbanks happy that they are really paying someone else's debts as the money that could have been spent on food is going to creditors?

I'd be delighted, tbh. Debt paid off doesn't grow. A tenner paid towards a debt could actually be worth £20 or more; meanwhile my tenner buys a few meals so someone doesn't starve while they get back on their feet.

What is wrong with people?!

I think there will be problems regardless even with pre pay cards, feckless parents could still sell them plus the pin for booze or cash, dominant partners could still take they card for their own use leaving non dominant parent with nothing to feed children on.

re the debt, there are always "brand new" goods being sold on local FB sites with locations in poor areas. I suspect they take out the item from Brighthouse and the like on exorbitant rates and sell it for cash at knock down prices or there is some other thing going on. 3 brand new fridge freezers have appeared being sold from local rough estate in matter of a few days. So anyway they are getting £200-300 in cash and then carrying a debt of iro of £700 plus for an item that retails at £300 ish.

It's that cycle of debt and massive payments that gets people into these problems. But the solution isn't to starve children.

I've set up a mini collection point at work and have taken two big donations to the official collection point at the local church this month. Very pleased to see that the collection box at the church was brimful and it gets emptied every other day.

Anyway, that wasn't meant to imply that all foodbank users are feckless, I appreciate that there are many reasons for their use - just got sidetracked onto one potential user rather than badging everyone under the same banner.

Not all those in debt are feckless either - there are many reasons people get into debt and it's hard to get out of poverty as it can be an uphill battle with everyone making it worse.

Timely article I saw shared on FB today:

What it's like to grow up poor.

Most people who come to us only come once or twice, statistically. Hate the game, not the players etc.

I can relate to a lot within that article MrsH add in a father that had issues with alcohol and gambling, no holidays and no ability to go to Uni oh and a coin operated TV then that's pretty much life summed up.

However, despite DH and I both coming from that background, our DC are very much middle class and uni bound. It's not a life sentence being poor however hard it seems at the time. All my siblings are home owners with decent hardworking kids and now grandchildren.

Can anyone tell me if there is an equivalent of a food bank but for school uniform / other kids clothing which I can make donations to? Surely there must be lots of low income families out there who are struggling to afford school uniform and shoes etc?

Or does anyone know if schools in deprived areas donate uniform to kids on FSM? Or am I best just taking everything to a charity shop? (I always worry with charity shops that a lot will get thrown away or that low income families would not search there for uniform. Plus I've tried donating shoes in the past (we got through 20 pairs of kids shoes last year!!) but was told they would not take kids shoes!)

I'd like to add, I'm shocked by some of the comments on here denying that anyone could be so poor they cannot afford food, plus terrible comments blaming poverty on the existence of state welfare and feckless parents. Shocking!