MIL gave children gifts from a homeless charity for christmas!

[Jellyworms]

Thats it really, just a bit taken aback!

MIL is a strange one at the best of times, always expects but never wants to give. She didnt get my children (her first and only grandchildren aged 2 and 4) anything last year but asked my dh why we didnt gift her anything. Anyway, fast forward to this christmas.

she came over for christmas day with two big paper bags full of toys for both my children, i was shocked as the only thing shes ever brought them is a pair of socks.. children both started opening said gifts when my dd bought me over a piece of paper that was inside to read im assuming thinking it was a christmas card.
i started reading and to my absoloute horror it said “merry christmas from community assosiation” then at the bottom had a box ticked boy x girl x age and packed by x x x

i was absoloutley shocked, didnt make a thing of it until she had left later in the evening when i bought it up to dh. He completley didnt understand the situation and brushed it off.

googled the charity and its a homeless charity for children and adults facing homelessness and fleeing abuse (none of which she is!) no idea how on earth shes wrangled this but im absoloutley seething with anger at her for being so selfish taking from vulnerable children, lying and also not giving two hoots about her grandchildren that she cant even purchase them a gift.
the gifts were gorgeous and worth id say £60 per child easily that people have clearly bought to donate in good will.

What would you do? Do i confront her? Do i tell the chairty?

I'm put off by Christmas toy collections for various reasons, and things like that don't exactly fill me with confidence that my money couldn't be better spent
The cynic in me from being on here for too long says that's exactly why this thread was posted
especially with all the digs at foodbanks too.
I hope I'm wrong.
I personally will keep donating as don't want anyone to go without or feel shit for struggling.

I’d imagine she’s been approached at a social hub type place if she visits food banks and asked if she has grandchildren but there’s no fraud etc to report as there isn’t a strict criteria to meet and they won’t want the items back. They’re given in good faith to whoever expresses a need and she obviously has for whatever reason

Yes this, with her attending food banks

Stupid woman. How very selfish of her.
I'd give a donation to the charity.

Don’t you have to prove hardship to access food banks? If she’s not hard up, then this needs dealing with too.

There's food banks (for those in need and require a referral) and community fridges /pantries (set up to stop excess food going to landfill and open to anyone ) We use our community fridge, it cuts our food shopping bill down considerably and means food that would end up in skips can still be used. They also have bunches of flowers etc that supermarkets aren't able to sell due to being 'bruised' etc and often allotment owners will donate excess. Our town also has a trussell trust food bank which is about providing bags of staples for those in need and require a referral and a 'voucher' from a professional.
For whatever reason your MIL has been able to access gifts for her grandchildren via a charity. Had she bothered to remove the piece of paper, then you wouldn't know anything about it. My parents used to get a Christmas box every year from their local rotary club, they had no problems affording Christmas food, the criteria was you had to be retired to receive one.
I'd check with DH whether she's actually having financial problems, disposable income isn't always what it seems

You need to be referred to a food bank with a voucher from a referral agency e.g. a school, doctor, social worker, council worker etc but it’s usually more of a chat than a means test for obvious reasons. Each agency will have their own way of doing things, for example if someone asked for a voucher more than twice in I think 3 or 6 months, we’d be nudged via our internal records system to make a financial wellbeing referral and have someone offer to check benefits entitlement or advise with budgeting.

There are also lots of community pantry, warm space, community fridge type schemes where you can get free or very reduced food. Lots of them centre around food waste and are given donations with short dates by local businesses. Our food bank here is in a church and the volunteers wouldn’t turn anyone away who went asking, there is usually something they can do to help. Most people won’t know the difference and when people say food bank, often they likely mean something like this.

That is shocking - downright sociopathic if true.

Yeah go on then...

Oh my God 😂. What a cheeky fucker!

This is worse than my MIL regifting DH and his former fiancé’s engagement presents to us. For years.

Maybe she has financial problems you are unaware of?

So out of order and makes you wonder how many other people do this. I always donate a child’s gift to a local charity at Christmas and really annoying to find out people are using it when they don’t really qualify. I guess it’s hard to ask for evidence of need. Her son needs to be having a word. I’d be making it clear i’d rather they had no gift than MIL abusing a local charity. What’s wrong with people?

Charitable initiatives have become very muddled these days, mostly due to social media.

You get all sorts of well-meaning sometimes power hungry individuals setting up initiatives that have no proper referral system or checks and balances. One year I saw a post from a woman living on quite a well-to-do road (large family homes), asking for present donations and then inviting ‘mums in need’ to knock on her door to collect gifts for their children…What could be wrong with that Dickensian scheme!

But on the other hand some charities might give universally to any or all children in order to avoid stigma.

The most useful thing would be to give money to refuges, baby banks or similar organisations so that they can buy the things that vulnerable families actually need. But people are often less keen to do that than to buy a physical gift.

I suspect that she may have been encouraged to take something or put their names down via the food bank, as people have already suggested.

The charity isn't distributing donations properly. If they're asking people to buy gifts for children in need, then they should complete necessary checks on recipients. The victims here are the donors & the children the donations were intended for, not the "charity".

What she did is unforgivable! I’d make it my personal mission to destroy her for this.

I wouldn’t jump to this conclusion; she sounds mentally ill to me.

That is incredibly shocking! I think the ages are relevant though. My son has profound disabilities and attends an overnight respite facility run by Action for Children. After his last visit before Christmas he came home with a gift bag with some small gifts in - each one was labelled “Male - Age XX”, so they had obviously come from a donation scheme where his details had been put forward for people to buy specifically for him - a giving tree or something similar. It suggests that MIL didn’t just scoop up some excess gifts somewhere, but that your children’s information was deliberately put forward for gifting.

I can’t imagine how this must make you feel. I’ve been thinking about the kind people who bought my child Christmas gifts ever since we got that parcel - the kindness of strangers is a wonderful thing and I’m sure it must sit very badly if you think MIL has misrepresented her situation in order to give these gifts to your children. Can you ask her outright?

There's lots of types of food banks. The big Trussell Trust ones still use the same referral process, lots of smaller independents don't.

There's a place for both types, so if it is important to donators they should only give to the referral based ones.

She doesn't sound ill to me, more a miser, will take whatever she can for nothing.

The sort of person who will always be last to buy a round. Never offer her share of the bill.

Agree.

It’s really easy to defraud food banks.

Too easy.

MIL is a thief - like most of them she thinks she’s entitled to what her nasty little eye lands on.

Shop her. Tell the charity, changing the kids’ names and ages and don’t give the presents back. Explain it’s not just presents, she’s robbing food, and she’s got form.

Keep her at a distance from DGC. She loves money, not people, and types like that aren’t always healthy to be around.

How's she going to food banks regularly?
I thought you needed referrals?

I don't understand these posts where the DH or DP is not mentioned at all. It is like he does not exist or has no role to play.

It is his mother - let him deal with this. You don't need to do anything.

You can just lie for 5 secs to get the referral & many foodbanks don’t need them anyway.

Sigh. Food parcels round here have got a lot smaller because there’s so much new poverty now.

No one needs fraudsters stealing from the poor.

Unfortunately I've heard of people taking advantage of food banks etc before. Not a nice trait and obviously she has some sort of personality disorder to think that it's ok to steal donaters' hard earned contributions away from more vulnerable people. Selfish and wrong. I would definitely need to take it up with her. She sounds like a total miser. Cut her off ✂️

Id inform the charity and if you can afford it donate the £120, I wouldnt take the toys from the children that feels like a punishment for them.

I would tell DH to sort her out. If she doesnt want to exchange gifts thats fine but just taking or stealing from the poor wont be tolerated