Wellingborough and Rushden food banks at crisis point due to coronavirus lockdown

Managers of two food banks serving Wellingborough and Rushden have appealed for help to restock their shelves to provide meals for vulnerable families across the towns and villages that they serve.

Both the Daylight Centre Fellowship (DCF) in Wellingborough and Rushden-based East Northants Community Services (ENCS) have said that the clients that they work with are facing massive problems.

They have urged people to continue donating much-needed food that will be handed to families in hardship as the coronavirus lockdown continues.

Jo Burns, operations manager for ENCS, said: "It's got the potential to be a national crisis if it continues. The whole system is messed up. You've got people who are single parents who have to stay at home so they can look after their children. People are using more energy and they don't have enough money to top-up their key cards.

"The poorer you are the harder it is. There's a five-week wait for Universal Credit. Some families on free school meals are getting vouchers to spend at a supermarket but if you can't get to the supermarket to spend them they're no use.

"If people start to starve they will get desperate. There will be children and families without food."

Not only have donations to food banks from individuals stopped coming in, regular collections from churches and other groups have stopped due to them being closed or not meeting.

Paul Adams, manager of DCF, Wellingborough, said: “The charity runs pretty much hand-to-mouth at the best of times and while we’ve never had to turn anyone away empty-handed before, I really fear that that will be the case before too long, if we don’t manage to restock our ever-dwindling shelves.

“We really desperately need such items such as tinned tomatoes, tinned vegetables and fruit juice as well as jarred cook-in sauces and pasta, but frankly anything that can be used to feed someone who will go hungry if we can’t help them would be very gratefully received."

Both ENCS and DCF have been delivering freshly-prepared hot meals to people who had been living on the streets and who are now in hotels and hostels.

The service has been provided at cost by Portfolio Events in Kettering who have switched their catering expertise to cooking 75 nutritious meals for clients a day.

Meals are then handed to people to be warmed-up by the customer or heated by staff.

With help from a £10,000 Awards For All grant from the National Lottery Community Fund, DCF will be funding a project to escalate food bank services for needy elderly, ill, housed rough sleepers and disadvantaged communities in Wellingborough.

The project will increase the resources and capacity for DCF to process and deliver food directly out to the community, with the grant funding equipment, storage, volunteer petrol expenses, training and marketing.

Investments have been made re-ordering the centre in High Street and buying new microwaves for heating food.

Rachel Mallows, DCF chairman, said: ‘We’re over the moon at the news we have been awarded this grant which comes at a time when the charity has quite obviously seen an exponential growth in the demand for its services of food parcels and hot ready meals to its clients.

"This grant makes all the difference to our ability to cope with the needs and is most welcome."

The charity has lost income from its charity shop based in Cambridge Street, Wellingborough but Ms Mallows has been applying for grants to keep the service open.

She added: "We've applied for grant funding and we're working really hard - battening down the hatches and trying to sustain our services.

DCF Wellingborough and ENCS Rushden have food bank donation points in Wellingborough at Tesco in Turnells Mill Lane, Sainsbury’s in Northampton Road, Wilko in Swansgate Shopping Centre, and Morrisons in Oxford Street, and in Rushden at Asda in Washbrook Road, and Waitrose in Crown Way.

Contact the Daylight Centre by emailing [email protected] or call 01933 446490.

To donate to ENCS food bank service please click here or call 01933 733001.

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