Food banks

I agree it is rather shocking that we need to do these things, but equally I find it reassuring that people want to do what is necessary to help others. I commend the doctors and nurses who have suggested offering food parcels as part of the process to help people recover properly.

Whatever it takes.

Food banks and food parcels in 2015 !

Ian Duncan Smith lives in another universe. As I understand it the majority of users of Food Banks are in work, or are people waiting to receive benefits other than Job Seekers Allowance (housing Benefit, Disability etc) where the system has cocked-up and the money has been delayed.

Locally a seriously mentally ill man died of starvation(he weighed under 6 stone when he died) because he was classified as fit to work and was too disturbed and distressed to do anything to sort things out. The relevant department admitted at the inquest that the assessment that classified him as fit for work was flawed.

I have now read that a hospital on Tameside has a food bank because of malnutrition in patients.
Perhaps they should have put one in Stafford Hospital when Andy B was in charge.

So - how are hospital patients going to prepare food?
I know hospital food can be terrible, but that is nothing new.

where the system has cocked-up and the money has been delayed
I agree, MOnica, which is why I read that it is more due to incompetence and useless staff than government policy.

I know hospital food can be terrible, but that is nothing new.
which, of course, doesn't make it right.

I thought that it had improved with the efforts of that chef, can't remember his name, from Saturday Morning Kitchen.

Oh yes, James Martin - he had a series on tv about improving food in hospitals and I thought he had made hospitals sit up and listen. It's not for lack of funding, it's waste and incompetence - again!!

The food parcels that hospitals are handing out are given to patients on discharge because they came in with malnutrition. It has nothing to do hospital food. The numbers of people including children suffering from severe malnutrition is increasing year on year over the past 5 years. This in a country the 5th richest in the world. I find it utterly disgusting.

And yet, at the same time, we are constantly harangued about obesity.

A small point but a pertinent one: malnutrition is different from starvation. People suffering from malnutrition may be getting enough, or even too many, calories, but not all the nutrients they need. This may sometimes be because of not eating nutritious things rather than because they don't have access to nutritious food. Please note my use of the word 'may'. I'm just saying these things are possibilities, as well as people not being able to afford the food they need. It's not a simple issue.

Food bank use in Germany and France is much higher than in Britain. In 2014, 1.5 million people a week used food banks in Germany and there are twice as many food banks in France as there are in Britain.

I know that doesn't justify their existence, but why do people on here seem to think that somehow the UK should be any different from the rest of Europe?

The USA has had food banks in operation since the mid-sixties. It isn't a new phenomenon brought about by a dastardly Tory government.

According to the item I read a trial of job advisers at a food bank has been very successful as they have also been sorting out people's problems with delays in payments and giving them information about other benefits they could be claiming. Perhaps DWP people become more helpful if they actually see the effect their actions are having on the unfortunate recipients.

Food banks is just a new name for soup kitchens, and I can't agree we can accept food banks in the UK because America had them in the sixties , America had segregation in the sixties too.

Suppose food banks are acceptable if one doesn't have to depend on them or have to queue up for food in them

So somebody at a jobcentre sanctions someone who turns up five minutes late for an interview. Then he gives the sanctioned person a chit to go to the food bank because he has no food in the house.
At the food bank someone else from the DWP sorts out the delay in payments and releases the sanctioned person from the sanction.
Why not just stop immediate sanctioning in the first place?
The shortest time for sanctions is four weeks.
The problem is that food banks are not extensions of the DWP. They are charities.
The man interviewed on the radio this morning said he would not have someone from the jobcentre there because the volunteers might stop volunteering. He has a benefits adviser, from another charity.
Could be AgeUK, or CAB, or another charity; he did not say.

I notice you only picked up on my mention of the USA, Anniebach, but didn't comment on the German or French figures. Why should the UK be expected to be doing better than the rest of Europe?

I do not think it matters whether food bank use is better or worse in other countries. What matters is how bad it is here.

''Specifically, Duncan Smith’s remarks suggest the government is comfortable with food banks being an integral – and presumably permanent – part of the welfare state, as a de facto charity partner reliant on public donations dealing with the fallout from cuts to benefits and DWP inefficiency.

It is also a tacit admission that there is a clear link between welfare policy, in the form of benefit sanctions and benefit delays, and the rise in food bank use – something Duncan Smith has aggressively denied for years, in the face of mounting authoritative evidence.
Job advice to be offered at food banks, Iain Duncan Smith tells MPs
Read more

Plus it inadvertently highlights that the glacially bureacratic and complex DWP system is often appalling at serving vulnerable customers. Disabled people, people with mental illness, with learning difficulties, those with debts or who are in poverty or homeless, often end up in food banks precisely because the benefits system is slow, inaccessible and capricious."

This is what is wrong about it, that IDS thinks it should be part of the welfare system. Shouldn't he be trying to change the system so that food banks are not necessary?

What publication is that from, durhamjen? Halfway down it says 'Read more'. Read more what?

Yes, but, but, but, as I understand it the majority of Food Bank users are already in work. Although a DWP bod sorting out their entitlement to other benefits would certainly help.

All I can say is that the fact that there are food banks in the USA, Germany and France does not validate the presence ofr them in the UK. Food Banks, in any country are a sign of the failure of the state to provide a proper, fair and dignified welfare system.

An article in the Guardian.

Germany had the Berlin Wall in the sixties . So easy to say other countries have food banks / soup kitchens yet ignore the faults of the same countries .

Our food bank and drop in centre have the CAB there to advise, help and support, we do not want DWP staff who send people to food banks in food banks advising

"So far, so good. But what does the research actually show? First, it finds that food bank users had typically experienced one or more significant crises in their life, such as job loss, bereavement, ill health or relationship breakdown. While referral to a food bank sometimes arose from chronic low income, more typically it was as a result of an acute income shock. Food bank use was generally seen as a last resort when other forms of support had been exhausted. The interviewees spoke extensively of the feelings of shame and embarrassment that food bank use evoked – while also saying that they would have been ‘bereft’ without it.

Digging deeper, the research shows that the immediate income crisis triggering food bank referral was often linked to the operation of the benefit system (affecting between half and two-thirds of those from whom additional data was collected). Key problems that food bank users had encountered included a benefit claim that had not yet been decided (28-34 per cent of cases); benefits being stopped or reduced due to a sanction (20-30 per cent); and problems with disability benefits, including money being stopped due to being found fit for work (9-16 per cent). In addition, during the course of the research it became clear that the interval between ‘mandatory reconsideration’ of employment support allowance (ESA) claims and a possible appeal, during which time no benefits are payable, was also emerging as a potential problem.

In turn, these failures were compounded by shortcomings with the ‘safety net below the safety net’. Hardship payments, short-term benefit advances and local welfare assistance – all designed to support people when other sources of benefit income fail – provided inadequate support in many of the cases. Food bank users were often unaware of these discretionary forms of support, and found them difficult to access, while only small numbers reported receiving assistance even when they had applied."

From research by the Child Poverty Action Group, December last year.

I'm curious. Is there any country in the world that posters here consider in every respect perfect, and would consider to be a shining example to all the rest? I don't think one exists, but you may know differently. Before shouting me down, this is a genuine question.

However can comparison with another country validate what we do? The UK is a sovereign country and makes its own decisions.
There are choices ,the choices we have currently made, where people are forced to use food banks lowers a person self esteem and dignity. It sends the message that they are worth less.

What happened before the current wave of food banks started? What has changed if there were no food banks before? Were there no food banks before? Before when?

I think the fact that there are food banks in other equivalent countries is significant. It's all very well to dismiss that fact but something is affecting other 'rich' countries as well. It's not just us. And there isn't an easy answer to the problem.
I am not excusing the problem by saying that. I'm wondering what has gone wrong and why. Also whether our social security system was much better before? Was it?

Thatbags Often it was "food vouchers" from children's services, but that had many disadvantages.

nigglynellie, no, I do not think there is any country that is perfect in everyway, nor will there ever be, but that does not stop me thinking that validating failures in this country by quoting similar failures in other countries is unacceptable.

What happened before food banks? Well their were a lot of unofficial ways of getting help. When many more people had religious affiliations they would approach their minister or other religious body, or their church would be aware of their need and help. I can also remember an elderly lady, my grandmother's god daughter, who grew up in much poverty in the docklands of London, explaining how groups of families coaesced in informal groups of friends and families who supported each other through good times and bad.

I saw the tail end of that in my childhood: my DGF automatically offerd a home to his childless sister-in-law when her husband died, another distant relation immediately provided a home for the vulnerable adult son of a close friend when his mother died.

People no longer have religious affiliations and the fragmenting of society means that these close mutual support groups no longer exist in the same way.