Important Changes

1]   West Cheshire Foodbank is the new name for Chester and Ellesmere Port Foodbank.

We are responding to the need that we see in the areas surrounding Chester and Ellesmere Port. In the New Year, we are looking at opening a new Food Distribution Centre in Neston. As yet there is not enough support for people in crisis here: one pensioner walked from Neston to Ellesmere Port in order to receive food for his family! We feel it is important that our name reflects the area we serve.

2]   0151 355 7730 is now the main telephone number for our New Office.

3]   info@westcheshire.foodbank.org.uk is now the address you should use for general enquiries. All our Foodbank email addresses now end in: @westcheshire.foodbank.org.uk.

 4] Visit www.westcheshire.foodbank.org.uk  to take a look at our website and find out more about what we do.

5] Our blog address is now www.westcheshire.blogspot.co.uk.

6] For mail and food deliveries, our address is:

WCFB,

Units 3 and 4,
Stanney Mill Industrial Estate,
Dutton Green, Chester, CH2 4SA   
     

'Pop Up' at Trinity Ellesmere Port

At the heart of Trinity Methodist Church is the desire to be church in the community; to share who we are and to be there for one another as neighbours in Ellesmere Port. A recent funding opportunity has now allowed us to develop a ‘Pop Up’ approach to sharing cookery skills.

 

The Pop Up was initiated by volunteers who love cooking and the initiative has also been supported by Community Food Workers from Links Healthy Living Centre. Thursday morning is always busy at the community café in Trinity. It seemed the ideal time to try this new approach and to focus on seasonal foods using basic recipes which had potential to be spiced up. The funding allowed us to buy equipment and work directly in the café, so ‘Daily Bread’ was full of good smells as people from across the community visited. Week one was home-made Tomato Sauce. This simple recipe details how to make a simple sauce and shares a number of ideas on how to spice this up. On Thursdays visitors have the chance to taste the food we make, to watch the process and to chat with the cooks. It’s proving a real success and we’d love it if you dropped in to say hello and find out more. If you love cooking and want to pass on your skills, come and get involved.  We’d also appreciate any donations for ingredients to support the Pop Up. A huge thank you to Wendy and Links Healthy Living Centre for all their hard work!

 

‘Pop-up’ is a Trinity Methodist Church Project supported by our Foodbank. The initial £500 investment for this was received from EPNAVCO’s Health and Well Being fund.

 

Regarding Jenny's Story

Over the last couple of days, Jenny's story has received considerable attention from the public as well as from local and national media. People have been shocked by the idea that someone might be given the wrong advice and have also asked whose role it was to advocate for Jenny in this situation.

 

Our purpose as a Foodbank is to provide people in crisis with emergency food and to signpost our visitors to agencies that can best deal with the underlying causes of that crisis. Jenny visited our Foodbank to bring her neighbour. A volunteer spoke with her and we referred her to Macmillan Cancer Support. Sadly, Macmillan are seeing Jenny's situation repeated across the country. Click here to see a BBC report regarding delays to benefit payments for terminally ill patients. At the Foodbank, we do not have the expertise to advocate for individual visitors and rely on specialist organisations to fulfil this role.

 

Whilst scandalous, the scale, pace and nature of current welfare reforms make Jenny's story neither uncommon nor surprising. Approximately half of all people turning up to Foodbanks are doing so as a direct result of having benefit payments delayed, reduced or withdrawn altogether. Figures gathered by the Trussell Trust and by Chester and Ellesmere Port Foodbank show that both locally and nationally, changes to the benefit system are the most common reasons for people using Foodbanks. These include changes to crisis loans eligibility rules, delays in payments, Jobseekers allowance sanctions and sickness benefits reassessments. These changes are well documented. An excellent report published by Oxfam and Church Action on Poverty can be found here.

 

The growth in the numbers of people we provide with emergency food is a demonstration of the extent to which the 'normal' safety net provided by the state in the form of the welfare state is failing in it's basic duty to ensure that people like Jenny and her neighbour have sufficient income to feed themselves adequately.

 

We are disappointed that there has been no policy response to increasing food poverty in the UK and we strongly support the Trussell Trusts' call for an official and in depth inquiry into the causes of increasing food poverty and the consequent rise in the usage of Foodbanks. 

 

Jenny

Jenny came to the Chester and Ellesmere Port Foodbank last month, having been diagnosed with terminal Cancer. Her prognosis was three to six months. She already suffered with several chronic illnesses preventing her from working over the last two years and was in receipt of Disability Living Allowance. Having no family she was trying to "put her house in order", ensuring all her bills were paid and saving up for her funeral. Her DLA was stopped; the reason given was that as she was not expected to survive the required time, she did not qualify for this benefit! She came to the Foodbank not for herself but to bring a neighbour who had mental health issues and short term memory problems. He had been 30 minutes late for his appointment at the Benefit office (he had forgotten the time!) and had therefore been sanctioned. He had not eaten for three days. They were both given a meal and the time to talk of their problems and referred to the appropriate agencies for food vouchers and further support and help. Several weeks later Jenny came to the Foodbank to thank everyone for the help and food that was given and the kindness and support that was shown in their time of need. Jenny died three weeks later.

 

Jenny shared her story with one of our volunteers, and requested that we share it with you. We are privileged to do so.