Southend Foodbank spending £10,000 a month to fill donation shortfall
They have given out over 12,000 food parcels this year already
Southend Foodbank is "not seeing the donations" needed to fill all the parcels they give out.
According to Cass Francis, Communications and Campaigns Co-ordinator, the foodbank in the seafront city is having to "spend £10,000 a month buying in stock just to make up these basic food parcels."
They are appealing for donations as they are about to enter their "busy season" of the year.
In interview with Greatest Hits Radio Essex, Cass Francis said:
"At the Food Bank at the moment it continues to be as busy as it has been the last couple of years.
"Last year we gave out over 18,000 parcels, the year before that we gave out 20,000 parcels. So there was a small reduction in the amount of people that are coming to see us.
"Which does sound like good news until you to realise that it was a massive jump two years ago in the amount of people that we saw. So we sort of had like an 120% increase in the amount of people come to the food bank.
"They have not gone back down to pre 2020 - 2023, cost of living crisis levels.
"So far this year we've given out over 12,000 parcels so we're well on our way to meeting the amount of parcels we gave out last year."
When asked about the amount of people at the foodbank at different times of the year, she said:
"We always see a small decrease in the summer and that's because people don't have to feed the electricity and gas metres so much.
"We always see an upturn in the amount of people needing the foodbank this time of the year.
"So as soon as harvest kicks in, as soon as the schools go back, as soon as people have realised that they've got to buy school shoes and stuff like that and the weather gets cold and the heating goes on, all of that in the build up to Christmas and then the cold months in January and February always see an increase.
"It's going to get busier. It's always going to get busier this time of year.
She also shared that the foodbank is having to pay to fill up parcels:
"We are not seeing the donations that we need to be able to fill all these parcels that we're giving out.
"So we've been spending and and continue to spend £10,000 a month buying in stock just to make up these basic food parcels."
The foodbank has already decreased the amount that gets put into food parcels, Cass said that:
"The next thing that we could do would be to reduce the amount of parcels that people are able to to receive in enrolling 6 month period.
"These are conversations that we're having at the moment and it is purely because people and our donors, haven't got the money they used to be able to spend on the food because food is so much more expensive now.
"If you are somebody who regularly donates to us, you go to one of our permanent collection points, say in like Tesco or Asda, somewhere like that, and you spend £5 extra on top of your shop and you put that in our in our trolley. So that comes to the Food Bank and £5 just doesn't go as far as it used to.
"We have had to really dig a lot of funds as I say £10,000 a month into keeping the food bank running and to meet the need that we see locally.
"We are at the moment currently massively trying to fundraise because we need to get support in.
"You tend to think of food banks as just needing food, but we do need that financial support as well. The way things are at the moment."
Cass also said that the foodbank is "giving enough food out to feed thousands and thousands of people every year"
Southend Foodbank has 150 volunteers, and Cass says: "it is important that we're there and I think that society and the community should work together and should be there for each other."
"There's always been people that really do need a little bit of extra help, but it's gone way past just a few people now, it's gone way past a local ,small amount they need on our doorstep.
"It's ridiculous. It's gone too far."
Cass told us about how to get involved in donating to the foodbank:
"If you've got a school, if you've got a community group, if you've got a family, you've got anything like that, a church that's thinking of making doing a collection for food bank, we've got pages on our websites with things like harvest, campaign resources, quizzes for kids and stuff like that.
"And we can come out and do assemblies and we can come to your church and we can come to your community group if you can band together with others to do a collection for us at this time of year, it'd be really, really amazing because we rely so much on that and it'd be great not to have to keep spending at the level we're spending.
"If we could get some stocks in, if we could fill up some shelves at this time of year.
"I would say if you could organise a food collection in your workplace, in your community, that would be amazing. And check our resources on our website.
"Failing all of that, you might see us in Tesco. You might see us in Asda. You might see us in Waitrose. You might see us in Lidl even collecting food.
"We've got quite a lot of collection days coming up and if you spot us, then that'd be great if you could buy something for us and we'll give you a thank you sticker."
Southend Foodbank is appealing for donations. Food can be donated on their website.