Food banks dipping into own resources as donations drop

Rising prices for food and other household items have left people across the region looking to food banks for help with putting meals on the table to support their families.

This, in return, has led to an increase in the need for donations for the food banks as they struggle to cope with the increase in demand and new people coming to them in need.

This situation has caused food banks like the Black Country Food Bank in Brierley Hill, the Elias Mattu Foundation in Wolverhampton and Breaking Bread in Wednesbury to begin using their own resources and finances to continue to keep going.

Black Country Food Bank CEO Jen Coleman said the current situation was very challenging, with demand for the service 20 per cent higher than last year and more money being spent by the food bank on supplies, due to a drop in donations.

She said: "The situation is challenging because of the increase in demands and drop off in donations, which we usually expect around this time of year, but which has caused us to spend around £12,000 in the last seven weeks on stock, which is a very new situation for us.

"Pre-pandemic, we never had to buy anything as we rely totally on donations and that got us through, whereas now we are looking on spending our finances on making sure we have new stock which, at the current rate, would see us make to September before we start to have problems.

"We get a varied demographic here using the food bank, with more employed people coming who are on zero hours contracts or struggling with price increases, and it's not a great place to be in with more food banks opening and makes it difficult for us as a charity."

The issues faced by the Black Country Food Bank are also echoed at the Elias Mattu Foundation in Wolverhampton, which has veered on the brink of closure several times over the last few months due to lack of supplies.

Founder Asha Mattu said the donations were getting less and less, while more people were being referred to or were coming to the Foundation for help.

She said: "We almost had to close a few weeks ago as we hardly had anything, so we are bulk buying now and that is going out every week and it's very worrying as we are just providing what we can and then we're wondering what we're going to do when that runs out.

"We're constantly making phone calls to people to help us financially and with food donations and people are coming in with small bags, but we keep coming back to square one where we will only run for so many weeks before we run out of food and wonder where our next funding is coming from.

"We could do with something regular so that we're not worried about where the funds are coming from, but the problem is that the numbers are not dropping, but are actually going up and that means the situation is actually getting worse for us."

At Breaking Bread, manager Lin Walford said she had never seen anything like it at the food bank, with donations low and demand continuing to rise.

She said: "It would be worse if we hadn't had a couple of nice monetary donations, but it's very different to what myself and the staff have been used to as there's more people, larger families and we're working so much harder to help them.

"We're finding we're having to spend more money due to the drop in donations and do more shopping, which is difficult as only two of us have got cars and we're finding that £300 isn't going as far as we would like it to go.

"We are fortunate that we have some generous people who donate to us, but it is difficult and I'd like to be able to see some hope for the future, but I don't see much change at the moment."