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!

MissoniMad If I were you I'd contact some schools in local deprived areas. Some of them offer second-hand uniform for parents on low income.

Bump

A word on sanctions.

My neighbour. Disabled. Prognosis poor; she reckons she's got a few years left (in her 40s).

Crippled by the bedroom tax. Can't move as in rent arrears, but can't deal with rent arrears until she's somewhere cheaper.

So half her money goes on rent and rent arrears in order to keep a home over her head. If she gets evicted for rent arrears she will be deemed voluntarily homeless, and therefore entitled to no help with housing. Despite having cancer and mental health problems.

Lives week to week on what's left. Needs a food parcel on weeks when she has to pay water rates, or she won't eat that week.

No transport. And couldn't bulk buy cheaply even if she had transport, as she can't afford to top up her electricity meter card thingy every day. So no point in even trying to freeze stuff (plus I think she sold the freezer to get Christmas presents for her children (who don't live with her).

And now she's been sanctioned. Because the bus was stuck in traffic so she was late to the appointment. And she missed the last appointment as she was in hospital.

So no money coming in for the next six weeks.

Those of you who think this is justifiable, or right, or that she deserves it, or that she brought it on herself, how? What exactly should she have done differently? What should she do now to make things better? She sees suicide as the only option; however she receives just enough support that people find her, she's admitted to hospital (involuntarily), treated, released, and abandoned once again until the cycle repeats.

I write for a local magazine and visited a food bank for an article. I'll just copy a bit of it for all of the arseholes on this thread:

*Another woman came in wearing a supermarket uniform. She and her husband worked and lived with one of their three children, who also worked part-time, but could they not always afford to buy food, she said. Her husband's hours had been cut and she had only recently taken up a new job at a supermarket, so her benefits had been stopped, leaving the family without money until her paypacket arrived. She was making her second visit to the food bank.

The woman, 42, who asked not to be named, was surprisingly cheery about using the food bank. Asked if it embarrassed her to need help, she replied, 'Not at all. It's a lifeline for a lot of working people'. Was she angry then about it? 'Not really' she said. 'You got to do what you got to do!'*

I had very little clue that people who worked needed foodbanks but they do.