Canterbury charity sees 100% year-on-year increase

KentOnline / KMTV

Canterbury Food Bank has seen a huge increase in demand for emergency children's parcels last month - supplying enough to make nearly 7000 meals. David Holt joined us on The Kent Morning Show.

Transcript

00:00In a month now, we supply around in excess of 10,000 meals, and that's for adults and children.

00:08The reason children's numbers escalated to, it was a record number of 6,669, was the school holidays,

00:18and that brings pressures of its own, it brings additional cost, and those that receive free school meals

00:24don't get that benefit during school holidays.

00:27Hi, David, it's Bartholomew here. The charity says that you guys have experienced a 100% year-on-year increase.

00:35What sort of a strain is that putting on your services?

00:39It's always tough. When I joined the charity five years ago, we were doing 2,000 meals a month,

00:47and then COVID came, swiftly followed by the cost of living crisis.

00:53We're used to doing in excess of 10,000 meals a month.

00:56And remember, this is in one district. This is just Canterbury, Whitstable and Herne Bay.

01:00We're servicing over the course of a year roughly 3, 3.5% of the entire population who are unable to meet their daily needs.

01:09It does put a strain on our resources, but we've built during that time.

01:14It's been organic growth, and we're reasonably confident that we can maintain supply.

01:20Yeah, we see certain pressures on families at different times of the year.

01:25Of course, school holidays are tricky, and particularly the Christmas period.

01:29I remember I've been down to your food bank before where you did an advent calendar of different items being donated and things like that.

01:36And those are the times you really focus on to get these food parcels out,

01:39especially at a time of year where we're meant to sort of give and be grateful around Christmas.

01:45But I suppose around those Easter holidays and just the school holidays in general,

01:49is it becoming more tricky for parents because doing things and keeping the children entertained is so expensive as well,

01:55that sort of it's that balance between going out and doing fun things or having a meal on the table at the end of the day?

02:02Yeah. The cost of living crisis hasn't gone away. Inflation has been reduced.

02:09That doesn't mean food prices aren't still going up.

02:12And it's the last thing that goes for people.

02:15People will stop doing those things like going out for the day or going to the cinema or going to the pub in the evening.

02:23The absolute last thing that goes is food because it's the one thing you need on a daily basis.

02:27And so when people come to us, they are at the very bottom.

02:30Now, we know there can be a bit of a stigma around going to a food bank.

02:35Some people, you know, unfortunately feel ashamed almost that they sort of have to go to a food bank.

02:40How do you sort of get around that?

02:43And how do you help children and families receive those food parcels when, you know,

02:48they might even struggle to come forward in the first place?

02:52The vast majority of the parcels we deliver go straight to people's homes.

02:58Others go to agencies like social services.

03:01But the vast majority go to people's homes.

03:04They're delivered anonymously.

03:06Nobody ever knows that you're receiving food from a food bank because retaining our clients' dignity is a major, major part of what we do.

03:14We understand the shame that comes with picking up the phone and saying, I can't afford to eat.

03:18And so we make absolutely certain that people can't be identified as we deliver the food.

03:26Yeah, David, I remember last time I saw you within the sort of last six months or so,

03:31I was down at the food bank and speaking to sort of one of your call handlers.

03:34And he was telling me about the phone calls that he gets in every day and people,

03:38him answering the phone and then sort of divulging their story.

03:41And those numbers were just going up and up.

03:42Is it the same sort of story, you're getting a lot of people calling in?

03:47Absolutely.

03:48It's very busy.

03:48I mean, I've sat in on those calls too, and it's pretty grim.

03:53You know, we get people phoning in on a daily basis because they can't afford to feed themselves

04:00and they can barely afford to feed their children.

04:03The main driver for clients coming to us is people unable to meet daily living costs.

04:09The second biggest is benefits too low.

04:13So quite clearly, there's an issue that money isn't enough for most people.

04:20And it's not a case of budgeting.

04:22In my experience, most people that have very little money are very good at budgeting,

04:27whereas people that have more money tend to be more slack at it.

04:32And can you just give us a bit of an idea of the scale as to where you're delivering your parcels to?

04:37Of course, it's Canterbury Food Bank.

04:38So I'd imagine East Kent.

04:40But just how far are you delivering?

04:43We deliver within the Canterbury City Council area.

04:45We mirror it exactly.

04:47So we do Wistapol, Canterbury, Herne Bay and all those surrounding villages.

04:51It's a population of about 170,000.

04:55And as I said, we have serviced the need of about 3.5% of that in the last year.

05:01And David, just very quickly, could you tell us about your Better Off Calculator?

05:06It's something that the charity's just launched.

05:10Yeah, thank you for that.

05:12The Better Off Calculator allows clients and people who might be clients in the future.

05:16You don't have to be.

05:17So come on to the website and look to see if they're entitled to more money than perhaps they're receiving from the state.

05:24And I use the word entitled.

05:26It's not a case of people grabbing more money because they can.

05:30It's money that they should know that they can receive anyway.

05:33So they can get things like council tax reductions.

05:35They can get things like pension credit, which helps older people get by if money is running short.

05:43And it can help them with things like universal credit.

05:45It's an easy to fill out questionnaire on our website.

05:51And it will alert us to the fact that people are looking to possibly have a need that we can help them with.

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