No formula milk available from foodbanks

[CaraDuneRedux]

Times article:
www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/food-banks-ban-on-formula-leaves-babies-to-go-hungry-tcghd25gm

Maybe someone cleverer than I am can do the share token.

But in a nutshell, in order to follow Unicef guidelines, food banks like the Trussell Trust are refusing donations of formula, so as not to be guilty of encouraging women to give up breast feeding.

Note that we are not talking about the infamous bad old days of formula companies handing out free samples on post natal wards so that women never start to breast feed.

We are talking about families where a decision has already been made to use formula, and where the mother's milk has therefore stopped, who then find due to change in circumstance (eg. job loss during the pandemic) that they are unable to feed their babies. They can't magically restart breastfeeding at this point - the choice (given the 5 week delay between starting a UC claim and receiving the first payment) is formula or starvation.

Are others as horrified by this box-ticking piece of insanity as I am? What can we do? How do we exert pressure on the foodbanks to get them to help the people they were set up to help (rather than pursuing some Unicef-approved tick of self-righteousness)?

One already gets healthy start vouchers to pay for formula so one shouldn,t go short on that.

They're going hungry because wages are low and be edits aren't enough. The trussel trust are not to blame.

In theory the provision from a charity frees up all available funds for buying formula, as food is provided.

Blaming the charity isn't a good look here. It is a diversion.

There would definitely be ways to obtain formula milk. But the problem is as cassie points out so many of the places that could offer and signpost support are closed.

I love how we’ve had weeks of people on here insisting that a loaf of bread and some cheese is beyond the reach of families on benefits but £15 for a box of formula milk and that should be within the reach of families with a baby.

I am very pro breastfeeding but I do think some of these comments are really very unfair.

I work at a Trussell Trust foodbank and I've not heard anything about this so I don't think it's true!

How awful.

What is a needy baby, who decides and how quickly?

This pandemic is seeing families struggle on a big scale. Many won’t ever have been on benefits, Some may be too proud, some may be continually just above the benefits threshold....

I ate like a horse when breastfeeding. So financially struggling breastfeeding mums can use food books to help feed their babies but breast feeding mums can’t.

Formula feeding

@WrongKindOfFace

Provision should be more joined up but hopefully they are also helping eligible families to apply for healthy start vouchers which can pay for formula milk. www.healthystart.nhs.uk/healthy-start-vouchers/

I don’t think asking people to donate milk would be helpful as they wouldn’t necessarily be buying the brand needed.

Just wanted to bump this.

There are vouchers available that can be spent on milk (formula or standard) fruit, and vegetables, for anyone on a very low income who has a young child.

Consistency of brand is helpful, apparently, and this puts that choice in the hands of the parents.

[quote Calmasasleepycat]Here is a link:

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/food-banks-ban-on-formula-leaves-babies-to-go-hungry-tcghd25gm?shareToken=1263f8a64dc206e953f89461e064a336[/quote]
Thanks for the share token.

I agree it's wrong to pin the blame exclusively on food banks.

There are problems across the board. The gap between applying for benefits and receiving them. The inadquate level of benefits. Some HV being reluctant to help women access formula, or simply having too big a case load to pick up on every individual who needs help.

But having food banks wedded to the idea that they must not give out formula is adding to that problem. Barring a few children with genuine dietary intolerances, for most babies it is possible to switch from one brand of baby milk to another. It might mean a few minor problems - a colicky night, a bout of constipation. But it's better than having no food.

And I agree that in an ideal world HV would stress that BF was free. (I couldn't BF for medical reasons - I fucking begrudged every sodding penny I had to spend on formula, and I also lived in fear of something happening which meant I could't get formula. For instance, at one point when DS was little, there was a burst water main and everyone in the area had their water cut off - cue panic over "you're not meant to make formula with bottled water..." So I think for this reason, the experience of the woman in this article has really hit home on a very personal level.)

Health visitor provision is exceedingly patchy at the moment, although there are initiatives and pathways for people who need it to get formula, at the moment that can be challenging, especially for those who fall through the cracks due to a sudden change in circumstance. That said, food banks can do what they want, the one here doesn't accept formula, so there is someone else who coordinates donations if people wish to- they aren't a government entity.

in some women and their babies are falling through the cracks in the system and not being able to access formula.

Can you provide some evidence that there are babies in the UK starving from not being able to access formula?

People should take anget out and the companies for making formula for babies so expensive.

@user1471462428 They have a chat about feeding then ensure good hygiene with bottles then provide the formula how patronising! So suddenly finding yourself without money means you forget how to wash bottles.

It’s not as simple as that. Food banks can’t guarantee a consistent supply of formula on an ongoing basis. They can’t hold large stocks of all the different brands as they go out of date. The idea is that giving the family food and ensuring they are accessing everything they can in terms of support can free up money to enable parents to buy formula, and if they can’t then there are other routes available to ensure a consistent supply of formula. If a food bank does give a tub or two to a mother who wants to stop breastfeeding, what happens when that runs out and the food bank don’t have any more and her milk supply has dropped or stopped completely?

The guidelines are there to protect babies, not to judge people for their choices. If a parent needs formula then they need a consistent supply, not an occasional tub when the food bank has it.

Oh and the local food bank near me stopped accepting formula because the mothers they were providing it to were overwhelming refusing brands other than aptamil. I'm not kidding. As others have said, they now buy it as needed rather than stuff being donated going to waste. People may believe you can't change brand but you easily can. Formula in the UK is so heavily regulated in terms of ingredients that the standard stuff is all near identical.

£15 for formula? That's a rip off. £9 in Asda, just over £6 in Aldi. It was ages ago we had Healthy Start vouchers but I thought we had to apply for them so you'd need to know about it unless things are different now.

how patronising! So suddenly finding yourself without money means you forget how to wash bottles.

I asked for advice on how to best prep formula, the midwives said to Google it and they didn't have time to assist with 'artifical feeding', but anyway, I honestly don't think it's patronising to offer guidance and support to women who want it.

how patronising! So suddenly finding yourself without money means you forget how to wash bottles.

It's not this. It's that a huge number of people confuse bottle preparation and think ths key to boil the water to make the water safe. It's not, it's to add boiling water to the formula to sterilise it. They can chat about practical methods for making up bottles in advance that are safe.

@NoIDontWatchLoveIsland

in some women and their babies are falling through the cracks in the system and not being able to access formula.

Can you provide some evidence that there are babies in the UK starving from not being able to access formula?

The evidence is in the article, which someone upthread has now provided a share token for.

Formula should be available through health or social services for families who are struggling, not relying on charities.

It's too important to leave in the hands of charities - what if formula is available one week, and not the next?
It also leaves charities vulnerable to becoming reliant on formula company "donations".

So in a practical sense would I be best donating cash to the local food bank?
I happily pick up stuff on a food shop but would I be better just doing a regular cash donation so they can buy stuff for cases like this?

My youngest is in the juniors so it’s a few years since I bought formula (I combined fed breast and bottle so god knows what they’d say to that!) and it was expensive back then
and times weren’t as tough as they are now.

They should make it cheaper as it’s so expensive.

People should take anget out and the companies for making formula for babies so expensive

This! I can't remember the exact figures but they spend an absolute fortune on advertising. Formula simply does not need to be as expensive as it is.

It really is the sort of thing that needs to be handled by health visitors and the HV service should be more accessible than it is at present. On a small local family charity page I saw that they were trying to give away left over prescription formula with the prescription labels peeled off, completely dodgy and this is one of the reasons why the guidelines are in place. Babies should not be given any old formula, they need to stick to the same milk they are used to.

A lot of smaller Food banks rely solely on donations so asking people to donate a single £10+ item isn't realistic and even then it's just one tin to do one child for less than one week.
I donate to food banks when I can but I try to buy as much for my money as possible and think what my meal staples are so my measly single donation helps as many as possible.
Maybe I should rethink that.

Different babies need different formula. It's easier to refer families who needed formula to HVs and other services who can provide.

This, in short. I run a food bank. A few months ago the local council asked us to stop supplying formula, and instead to make an urgent referral to the local HV team. It works, in our case - families that need it receive vouchers or formula within the day and are then on the HV’s books, as it were.

1. It stops people falling through the cracks in the medical/HV system.
2. You really don’t want to have your formula supply reliant on a (generally) volunteer-led service that may receive Formula A one week, B the next and nothing at all most frequently. We could buy it in but that doesn’t solve the brand issue and relative to other items we buy it’s expensive and would affect our broader purchasing - 8 tubs of Aptamil or enough bananas for 400 people, which do you choose?