The foodbank

We started the foodbank as a direct result of being asked for food.
A family with a chronically disabled mother had had their benefits stopped and they turned to us in desperation.
The mother needed to eat in order to continue taking her medication and the rest of the family also needed food.
We called on friends and put out an appeal locally and within hours we had a whole weeks shopping for this family, my friend and I delivered it, the family were so grateful again for the kindness of strangers, the mother cried and later that evening mailed me to again say thank you and to tell us that they had taken pictures of the food.

That was the beginning and from there we are now helping on average 60/70 families a month alongside the parents and children we help with uniforms.

We have lots of well funded agencies who refer people to us ( I dislike the word clients) these agencies recieve lots of funding and pay very good wages to their staff yet they cannot feed and clothe people who are in desperate need, something wrong with that when we so far have managed completely unfunded for almost 9 years, yes you do have to be inventive and sometimes we do wonder if we can carry on BUT something always happens, a phone call will come from someone who wants to donate food or someone wil get in touch that we have helped in the past and it is that that keeps us going.

It is though getting harder to carry on, everything we do, we do from our own homes, we are fortunate in that we both have 4 bedroomed homes but when we one day got a delivery of 8.5 tons of uniforms( I do have pictures) our homes were full to bursting as was my friends garden.
Sometimes the children have come home from school to a house full of boxes and bin bags and we have left just enough room for them to sit down, they have never once complained and have always been eager to help sort through the bags and boxes, all of our children have a wonderful empathy for those less fortunate than themselves.

Not everyone we help is on benefits, the elderly really struggled through 2 severe winters so we made up what we called winter warmer packs, these consisted of a hot water bottle, a fleece blanket, horlicks, hot chocolate, tea, coffee, sugar and cup a soups, the theory being that as long as you can keep drinking hot drinks then your core temperature doesnt fall and you should be able to keep active, we were extremely fortunate that some very kind people donated money towards the cost of these items and others donated hot water bottles etc, it worked and the people we gave them to were very grateful to receive them.

We have a lady who knits blankets for us now, her husband has alzheimers and it is her way of having something to do during the day/night whilst she cares for him, she recieves no help at all as she would have to pay for the help and feels she cannot afford it, shameful that!!!!!!
When this lady calls us to say there are some blankets ready to collect we go and will stay to chat to her for a little while, it is something she looks forward to as it is again something for her and it is an escape for her to be able to have a conversation about anything and everything except alzheimers, it is so sad :(