You know who said this at the start? Yes, Reader, that's right. We did. All of us in the blogosphere, if we still call it that...
In 2016, when the Guardian visited, Bestwood and Bulwell kept its stock of food in one shipping container; it now has four. Food donations now cover just a third of the demand; increasingly they have to raise money to buy in food. “There has been an assumption that there’s a magic food tree but we are all getting a wake-up call,” he says.
There's no magic anything tree. If you hand out free anything you can expect demand to rise.
Daphine Aikens set up London’s first food bank, in Hammersmith and Fulham, in 2010. She quit as its manager in 2021 on medical advice after a stress-related illness brought on by endless 12-hour days. “If I had known in 2010 what it [the food bank] would turn out to be I would never have done it,” she says. “I’m glad I did it. But I would have been horrified by what it has become. I thought the solutions would have been found, the issues would be sorted.”
Why did you think that, though?
First Love focused on people’s lack of income. This could be benefit problems, lack of a job, health issues, or inability to access disability benefits. First Love had pioneered advice workers in its food bank. Bentley decided to focus the charity’s energies entirely on the advice: out went the food; in came a service devoted 100% to support and advocacy.
First Love could spend £6,000 on food parcels to try and keep people afloat, says Bentley, or it could employ two advisers for a month to transform the lives of 50 people.
Is there not already a plethora of advice from government, both main and local, then? Why would you need 'advisers' to interpret it for them?
