To think food banks aren’t fit for purpose

[ForFirmBiscuit]

I don’t need to use a food bank but when I did they gave me tins of soup, a small tin of meat pie, a litre of UHT and a small bag of oats, nothing fresh. I didn’t get much and I was really hungry as there wasn’t enough calories and it was insubstantial. It gave me loads of anxiety to be so hungry. It’s always been like that.
I think food banks should be supplied by the council and given proper budgets for good food, even if they made batches of soup themselves to give out it would be more filling than a tin of soup

Have you thought about a sharing shelf or cupboard, or posting it on olio.

There’s two ways to join the paid one. A waiting list or have a child within a certain school academy. Pay your £3 entrance fee to sign up and that’s you for life.

They do take food bank referrals as well, as one offs. But it’s certainly the type of place you’d expect to see people trying to use if they were on the bones of arse getting close to needing a food bank, you can technically send someone else for you if you are working but that rarely happens, you can pay in advance or arrears so if your skint pay at the end of the month and whatnot.

Well. It’s a fair question. A few things really:

I have been doing this for four years now, and I have a good sense of how a legitimate service user approaches and engages us. I can’t explain better, but it’s a little like police officers sometimes knowing when a situation is likely to kick off. It has nothing to do with dress sense, iPhones etc. (That doesn’t mean I don’t get incredibly frustrated when our service users make bad decisions, inc financial ones.) I have discretion as to who comes in and if need be I will ask a few questions and suggest to people that it may not be for them, or ask for proof of circumstance.

We have very few walk-ins. Most people are referred to us by a local credit union, church, school and they undertake initial screening for us before referring.

We work with other local projects so people aren’t accessing multiple services each week.

We work really hard to destigmatise FB use so that people who do need it take that step and come in to use the service. We try to make it look like a shop. But the reality is a queue out the door each week and a wait of up to 30 minutes in whatever weather, sometimes with a bit of argy bargy, with everyone walking by knowing you were waiting to use the food bank. Would you do that, if you weren’t in need?

Download the Olio app - if there is nothing in your area then volunteer as a distributer as your can keep 10% of your collections.

I had never heard of Olio, thanks for sharing! I've made a note of if although this year I'm not sure we will have excess, out of 70 squash seeds planted only 8 have germinated because it was so much colder that usual.

They are not saying no to be awkward and ungrateful, can you advertise on
Your local FB and people can help themselves OR maybe a local church can distribute it

What a Boomer comment!

Totally agree. It's an absolute disgrace. People should be able to afford to feed themselves.

What a milennial comment. LOL at the hate for boomers. They arent all minted.

Thanks, I emailed one of the local churches last year but never heard back. I did read the local synagogue is growing fresh produce to distribute and teaming up with Waitrose so I may contact them if we have excess this year (although so far it's not looking likely with very little seed germination). Another mumsnetter shared a food sharing app so I'll take a look at that too. I never let the food go to waste, all my neighbours get inundated and when I still have veggies left I knock on the doors of people in the road I don't know (like a crazy person) offering them free veg. I find it embarrassing, but I also just can't throw good organically grown veg away.

I contact the local foodbank because we have an allotment and in the summer we have a surplus of fresh veg, so I offered it to them and they said no, they couldn't handle it and only dealt with shelf stable items. Very odd to me, all they would need to do is have a box of veg that people could help themselves to.

@Skyrainlight we do take that sort of thing but have to be careful about it. If the "box of veg that people could help themselves to" only stretches to 5-6 clients and that leads to an argument from the next 5, or requires monitoring to make sure that one person doesn't take the lot, it isn't so straightforward. I tend to keep back the "help yourself" stuff until the first dozen customers have passed, so the others get a fair crack, and then have it next to me so I can issue a few "I think you have enough there, please move on"s if needed.

That makes sense, I can understand it causing issues. Thanks for sharing.

Our food bank won't take fresh food. Our local supermarket doesn't have a container to put food into any more. I sometimes visit our local co-op in the evening late. The staff clear out bread and cakes which the lad said went to a food bank. So somewhere else must take it.

We're in Wales. Son is in a northern city. He says there's an app you can use there to get free food from supermarkets. I don't know what it's called though.

"Too Good To Go | Save Good Food From Going To Waste – Too Good To Go" https://www.toogoodtogo.com

Found it. Son says it's really good

You were starving hungry and are complaining your FREE soup wasn’t hand made?

There shouldn’t be a need for food banks for goodness sake. Concentrate on people having enough money to feed themselves rather than what’s in foodbanks.

From the Institute of Fiscal studies, your 1 is 5 is grossly underestimated.

This is women between 25 and 54.

‘Concentrate on people having enough money’ I think it’s their job to concentrate on getting jobs and working to organise their own shopping and lives. I have sympathy for those that work and need to use them, but they are very much the minority.

They'll be wanting a tin opener next!

And someone to feed it to them with a silver spoon - preferably wearing white gloves.

Maybe each one is run differently but the one at our church makes sure there's enough for a few decent meals. A single person household gets cereal, two tins of soup, beans, two tins of veg, tinned spuds, some pasta, pasta sauce, tea, sugar, bread, UHT milk, juice and some biscuits (depending on what is in stock).

It's not meant to be your sole source of food but an emergency top up for people who are temporarily in a messy situation.

If your Foodbank was only giving you 2 tins of soup and a small bag of oats, a meat pie and some milk, it's likely that is because that is all they have.

Honestly, the volunteers work so, so hard and yet someone is complaining about the inadequacy of what is an emergency service, stocked up by kind donations and largely staffed by people who volunteer their time.

If you now have better fortune OP, perhaps you should consider volunteering and seeing what it's like from 'the other side'?

An organization in my Dad’s area provides low cost cooked meals several times a week and also does Meals on Wheels, which my Dad has.

The food is delicious, but it can’t be a completely free service, because the chef and staff need to be paid, plus the costs of their facilities. I imagine some people receive free meals but I think most recipients pay.

It was set up by a lady who recognized the need and left some money to fund it. They also apply for grants and people donate-I’ve started donating, because it’s such a good service. The money has to keep coming from somewhere to fund it. 🤷

It will be a mix between fair share food charity and olio. Fair share tend to do the community fridge types and olio is olio.

Asda, sainsburys, Tesco, co-op, Iceland, one stop, the hospitals and some schools plus more like cash and carry’s work with olio for the volunteers to collect from but it’s still called and classed as a charity collection.

Katie Hopkins enters the chat.