Food banks

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.

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

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 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.

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.

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.

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!!

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.

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.

Food banks and food parcels in 2015 !

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.