I know that many people like to receive bite-size information in the form / length of a ‘tweet’. However, I feel that this deserves more attention so I am willing to run the risk of writing something longer to explain what we do as a charity.
A few months ago, I sat with our Advice Worker and we looked at a list of names. These households had all received a number of referrals to EFB. We wondered how we could try to reduce this.
We decided that we needed to begin by talking to the people and exploring what the issues were that were leading them to come to foodbank. There were familiar issues with debt and benefits queries – plus a few others.
We are fortunate to work with amazing agencies right across the city. Since we opened our Community Hub (‘The Living Room’) in October 2022, we have been fortunate to host workers from Citizen’s Advice Exeter, Job Centre Plus, ECOE (Exeter Community Energy), Age UK Exeter, Employment Plus and local Community Builders. We have also hosted several money courses with CAP (Christians Against Poverty). Between all of those agencies and all of those skills, we felt that we could work with some of the names on that list. We wanted to try to ensure that they did not need to come to foodbank long-term. Our simple desire for clients is that they will have enough money to have the dignity of doing their own shopping in a shop of their own choice.
There are no shortcuts in this work.
Many phone calls, appointments, meetings and applications followed.
After a lot of work, 37 of these 57 households continued to seek support from EFB. 20 households were no longer seeking support. Now, as we are being totally honest, we sometimes have to say ‘no’. There were a couple of cases where we offered all of the available support to people and they simply did not want to take it.
One of our trustees put this beautifully in a way that I, as a coffee lover, appreciated. He said; ‘We are not instant. We are filter’. That makes sense to me. While we do give emergency food to people in crisis, our aim is to help people out of the crisis and into a position that is sustainable. Giving out free food on an ongoing basis to people is not sustainable.
Every tin of packet that we receive at Exeter Foodbank is donated. It is not free food. Someone, somewhere has donated that item at a cost to themselves. Because of this, we have to ensure that we are honouring both our clients and our donors.
For the most part (90%+), clients really appreciate the support. They appreciate someone spending the time with them to begin to unravel some of the issues. They appreciate the option of having their Benefits checked, their debts discussed or a chance to write a very simple budget. We always aim to be helpful rather than judgmental and many, many people tell us what a positive difference it makes.
The majority of those 20 households wanted and managed to face up to the issues, seek help and not need the support of foodbank to feed themselves or their families. For us, that is an amazing result. It vindicates the holistic approach. It is ‘filter’ rather than ‘instant’.
I would not like you think that we are now only working with 37 households! That would not explain the economic situation that we find ourselves in. For every name that we ‘tick’, there is at least one new name that appears. However, we can see that this collaborative and holistic approach can work for many people.
For the clients who come to us, we encourage them to work with us. We have good support and we may be able to help them tackle the root causes of the crisis.
For people who support us with food or financial donations, we want you to know that this is what you are supporting. We believe that the work of a foodbank is not only sustaining but can be transformative. That is the bigger aim and the broader picture of what we do. That is why we come into work in the mornings and why most of our volunteers give up their time and energy.
The journey from 57 to 37 was difficult. However, we believe that it changed some lives, built some resilience, restored some dignity and revived some hope.
This year we have seen more referrals than we have ever seen before. We anticipate seeing more in 2024 than in 2023. This is why we have worked so hard to put this work in place. We will continue to try to develop and improve what we do, and we will continue to embrace new agencies who can offer support to our clients to help them to turn their situations around.
Thank you if you have supported us in any way on this journey.
We will continue to give this our very, very best.
Mark
