Foodbanks

[andysays]

The thing about foodbanks is that they could be a community response to the impact of the governments actions with potential for wider community organising. They were very much key to building working class solidarity in the miners strike.

And in some cases (not all, obvs) they are, this one for example:

We have Living Under One Sun in Tottenham, doing much of what you just listed. Community allotments, sharing the crops, learning to cook, even holding a couple of festivals a year.

http://livingunder1sun.blogspot.co.uk/

 

[yield]

Mirror. 30 May 2013

Nearly half a million people in the UK are now relying on food banks, leading charities claim today.

A new report says rising living costs and the government’s welfare reforms have pushed thousands more households into poverty and hardship.

The study by Church Action Poverty and Oxfam calls for a Parliamentary inquiry into how the Government’s cuts, the increased use of sanctions and benefit error have driven up the number of “hidden hungry.”

I've not had many calls lately asking, the social worker, for money from the hardship fund. Maybe they know there isn't one?

 

[treelover]

There were still people texting to the news programmes that even food banks were being abused and people had to learn to budget!, what is happening?, the speed of all this is incredible, though the public attitudes to benefits were primed by Blair and co.

 

[treelover]

Half a million Britons using food banks. What kind of country is this becoming?

Let's not mess about: a skyrocketing number of people simply cannot afford to eat, thanks to deliberate government policy


http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/may/30/food-banks-half-million

No mention that John Harris's party, the LP with Cruddas, etc, is planning to decimate the welfare state.

 

[treelover]

Food bank inquiries soar as further working class families slide into poverty

Millions find it harder to put food on the table as low wages, welfare cuts and high cost of living take their toll

http://www.theguardian.com/society/...ies-poverty-cuts-wages?guni=Keyword:news-grid main-1 Main trailblock:Editable trailblock - newsosition3

New article in the Guardian, shame more people didn't support the mass sleep out and publicise what is going on

 

[Frances Lengel]

How many times did you hear the word "foodbank" in everyday conversation a couple of years ago? Hardly at all, I'll wager. And now the word is familiar to the point that you'd think foodbanks had been around forever.

 

[ViolentPanda]

How many times did you hear the word "foodbank" in everyday conversation a couple of years ago? Hardly at all, I'll wager. And now the word is familiar to the point that you'd think foodbanks had been around forever.

In everyday conversation? Not "never", because parts of this area have been dirt-poor for decades, but not often, and they were, IIRC, all run by local churches. There wasn't the "third sector" involvement that's the main element of modern foodbanks.

 

[Frances Lengel]

In everyday conversation? Not "never", because parts of this area have been dirt-poor for decades, but not often, and they were, IIRC, all run by local churches. There wasn't the "third sector" involvement that's the main element of modern foodbanks.

That's what I was getting at - Most churches that I know of have always done food parcels on a more or less ad hoc basis - Not really known or talked about except by the people who had to go for them though, but just recently the word "foodbank" is popping up all over the rover - Like they're somehow an inevitable part of modern life.

 

[mrsfran]

Ok, there's a Trussel Trust foodbank opening near me very soon. I don't know whether to volunteer or not.

Pros:

1. I would hopefully be helping people.

2. I prefer direct action, actually doing something that will physically make a difference to someone.

3. The volunteering commitment fits in with the limited time I am able to give - just a few hours here and there.

Cons:

1. The politics. Foodbanks shouldn't have to exist. By volunteering am I perpetuating the current situation? Is Cameron going to claim that I'm a part of his "Big Society"? Because fuck that.

2. The Trussel Trust is overtly Christian. I am not keen on helping an organisation which quotes the bible in its mission statement.

Help me decide?

 

[Frances Lengel]

Ok, there's a Trussel Trust foodbank opening near me very soon. I don't know whether to volunteer or not.

Pros:

1. I would hopefully be helping people.

2. I prefer direct action, actually doing something that will physically make a difference to someone.

3. The volunteering commitment fits in with the limited time I am able to give - just a few hours here and there.

Cons:

1. The politics. Foodbanks shouldn't have to exist. By volunteering am I perpetuating the current situation? Is Cameron going to claim that I'm a part of his "Big Society"? Because fuck that.

2. The Trussel Trust is overtly Christian. I am not keen on helping an organisation which quotes the bible in its mission statement.

Help me decide?

On balance I'd say do it. You'll be one of the nice people working there rather than one of the pricks.

I've mentioned this before but my mam went to donate some stuff to a foodbank but the woman there thought she was after a scran but had turned up without a referral and proper screeched at her "Where's your ticket, you haven't got a ticket". If you were working there it'd be one more decent person to tip the scales against an arsehole like that.

 

[taffboy gwyrdd]

Genuine question, and I know there will not be a uniform answer: but if a vegan went to a food bank would they be likely to leave with the same amount of stuff as anyone else?

 

[Frances Lengel]

Genuine question, and I know there will not be a uniform answer: but if a vegan went to a food bank would they be likely to leave with the same amount of stuff as anyone else?

I'm not sure - I was wondering a similar thing about people with coeliac's and the like.

 

[taffboy gwyrdd]

I have a similar quandry to mrsfran. I am likely to do a bit of volunteering for a project run by a charity with housing associations that is signposting people and groups to advice and help with regards to welfare reform. It makes me uncomfortable, but perhaps not as much as foodbanks, although it's a persons choice that I'm not going to denounce. My issue with foodbanks is that they are even more "big society" than the project I am doing. I reject "big society" and want absolutely no part in it- it represents the abdication of government and is deeply cynical and mendacious - leeching off the good will of people to prop up a degenerate philosophy.

If I have time I will help organise "People's Kitchens" where we provide cheap meals with films or talks etc. that can bring folk together. We did this on my estate in the past but don't have the same space as we did. I am not as averse to Christian groups as some, but IIRC the Trussel lot are connected with tory filth and therefore could be complicit in blasphemy somewhere down the line.

 

[FiFi]

Genuine question, and I know there will not be a uniform answer: but if a vegan went to a food bank would they be likely to leave with the same amount of stuff as anyone else?

It would depend on would had been donated to the particular foodbank in question.
The staff at my local Foodbank will pack the bags of food when the voucher is presented and I have seen them discussing the families likes and dislikes with the person requesting support.

By the way, I have mentioned this before on a Foodbank thread but as it's one of my hobbyhorses I'll repeat it. Please, if you do donate to a Foodbank, remember non food items such as toiletries and sanitary items for the family. If a family is waiting for benefits to come through they will be struggling to buy nappies, soap etc as well.

 

[Thora]

It would depend on would had been donated to the particular foodbank in question.
The staff at my local Foodbank will pack the bags of food when the voucher is presented and I have seen them discussing the families likes and dislikes with the person requesting support.

I remember seeing on some programme a woman with 5 kids having to go to a foodbank after she was sanctioned for some spurious reason and they put in extra treat type items for the children.

 

[treelover]

In Sheffield the number of food banks in 2012 went from three to twelve.

new ones opening all the time, Methodist Church is dojng so, they say, the pressure is incredible and more are needed, crisis now

 

[yield]

Food poverty in UK has reached level of 'public health emergency', warn experts
Independent. Wednesday 04 December 2013

Hunger in Britain has reached the level of a “public health emergency” and the Government may be covering up the extent to which austerity and welfare cuts are adding to the problem, leading experts have said.

In a letter to the British Medical Journal, a group of doctors and senior academics from the Medical Research Council and two leading universities said that the effect of Government policies on vulnerable people’s ability to afford food needed to be “urgently” monitored.

A surge in the number of people requiring emergency food aid, a decrease in the amount of calories consumed by British families, and a doubling of the number of malnutrition cases seen at English hospitals represent “all the signs of a public health emergency that could go unrecognised until it is too late to take preventative action,” they write.

Despite mounting evidence for a growing food poverty crisis in the UK, ministers maintain there is “no robust evidence” of a link between sweeping welfare reforms and a rise in the use of food banks. However, publication of research into the phenomenon, commissioned by the Government itself, has been delayed, amid speculation that the findings may prove embarrassing for ministers.

Hundreds of thousands of people relying on food banks in one of the richest countries in the world?

 

[Awesome Wells]

How many GP's are facing patients made ill because they can't eat?

What do they do: brush it under the carpet and join the ranks of Dr Phil Peverley and blame them for their fecklnesses? Or send these people back and forth to be fed in hospital only for them to come out, starve, and go straight back? Or quietly perish out of sight and thus out of mind.

 

[DotCommunist]

rickets, rookeries and 50 years of work. if you can get it. Thieves man.

 

[J Ed]

How many GP's are facing patients made ill because they can't eat?

What do they do: brush it under the carpet and join the ranks of Dr Phil Peverley and blame them for their fecklnesses? Or send these people back and forth to be fed in hospital only for them to come out, starve, and go straight back? Or quietly perish out of sight and thus out of mind.

GPs can refer people to food banks, I assume that they do that

 

[DotCommunist]

dole, citizens advice and doctors can refer iirc. In some cases churches but they are like private networks iyswim. not part of the trussel thing

 

[King Biscuit Time]

I'm sad to say that at my NHS practice if we have a patient who has unexplained symptoms, we have started asking if they can afford to eat

A sorry state of affairs. We have a collection for the Jubilee foodbank in the Foyer at work. Where are the other Sheffield ones? I always get stuff if they're outside the Co-Op or Waitrose but I never see them at other supermarkets. I think I should up the ante a bit.

 

[Awesome Wells]

GPs can refer people to food banks, I assume that they do that

that isn't going to solve the problem, though a lot of GP's may well be content passing the buck. A few days worth of food and then...?

 

[Awesome Wells]

dole, citizens advice and doctors can refer iirc. In some cases churches but they are like private networks iyswim. not part of the trussel thing

I thought churches were hosting trussel trust foodbanks; that's how the tory pig that runs it makes his money. Churches have to donate some coin to do so.

 

[King Biscuit Time]

that isn't going to solve the problem, though a lot of GP's may well be content passing the buck. A few days worth of food and then...?

I'm not sure how that's passing the buck. What else can the GP do?

 

[J Ed]

A sorry state of affairs. We have a collection for the Jubilee foodbank in the Foyer at work. Where are the other Sheffield ones? I always get stuff if they're outside the Co-Op or Waitrose but I never see them at other supermarkets. I think I should up the ante a bit.

There are quite a few in Sheffield, here are some addresses. Another here.

While it's good to donate to food banks, it's worth remembering the fact that people in the Trussel Trust (often linked to the Tories or Labour Party) are making a profit off of people's misery and the good will of others. Lots of food banks are politically dodgy too, right-wing Evangelicals in some food banks give religious propaganda in parcels of food.

that isn't going to solve the problem, though a lot of GP's may well be content passing the buck. A few days worth of food and then...?

I completely agree but what more can *they* do?

 

[Awesome Wells]

I'm not sure how that's passing the buck. What else can the GP do?

Raise merry hell within the BMA and to their CCG and to their MP?

Somewhere something has to got to changel people are dying.

 

[DotCommunist]

I thought churches were hosting trussel trust foodbanks; that's how the tory pig that runs it makes his money. Churches have to donate some coin to do so.

yeah some, others are more informal networks.

 

[ViolentPanda]

Food poverty in UK has reached level of 'public health emergency', warn experts
Independent. Wednesday 04 December 2013



Hundreds of thousands of people relying on food banks in one of the richest countries in the world?

I'm glad the article emphasises the long-term health implications of malnutrition.

 

[treelover]

Food poverty in UK has reached level of 'public health emergency', warn experts
Independent. Wednesday 04 December 2013



Hundreds of thousands of people relying on food banks in one of the richest countries in the world?

The Medical Research Council is a serious player yet it looks as if the Govt and most of the media will ignore this, that's the problem , poverty once ingrained is not news, it becomes normalised. The media today is crowing about the growth figures, ' a new boom' etc, but it is more like the U.S economy where you can have growth but millions are still in dire poverty.