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.
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
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.