‘Client told me her & husb have stock cubes & mug of hot water for dinner 4 x week so that their kids can eat’ tweeted Rob McDowall, Director of the Scottish Welfare Support and Advice Network yesterday.
I’m asking myself the question, if the Sun wanted to write about food poverty and foodbanks, wasn’t this the story? Why did they choose instead to spend a week digging around actively trying to find something to discredit the UK’s biggest foodbank charity? (more…)
Read moreWhat comes to mind when we hear the word ‘foodbank’? My hunch is that you might think about last week’s opening question in the leaders debate, the donation point in your local supermarket or the cartoon about queues outside foodbanks in this week’s Times. I wonder if anyone reading this would immediately say ‘hope’.
But foodbanks do give hope. It’s one of the most common things people say to us when they’re at a point of crisis and have been helped: ‘you’ve given me the hope I needed to carry on’, ‘this is a lifeline’, ‘you’ve made me feel human.’
Read moreTrussell Trust Chairman Chris Mould has warned that ‘cutting an emergency service in half will only make life worse for people in crisis’ after think tank Demos made an extraordinary call to replace half of the UK’s foodbanks with community supermarkets by 2020.
The report, which seeks to find solutions to UK food poverty, displays a misunderstanding of how foodbanks operate and also seriously misrepresents Trussell Trust figures and what they show.
The Trussell Trust agrees that we need to find ways to stop so many people facing food poverty, and welcomes Demos’ interest in this area, but replacing foodbanks with community supermarkets is not the solution – it is illogical and a surprising suggestion from a leading think tank. (more…)
Read more
