Volunteer's sadness as demand rises for food banks in Stoke-on-Trent

A volunteer says she is saddened by the increase of people needing to use food banks in Stoke-on-Trent.

Elim Church member Sheila Bungenaar, 71, helps at the centre at the Cornerstone Community Centre on Mill Street in Newcastle-under-Lyme.

Figures show 947 adults and 440 children used food banks in Stoke between April and September.

“There seems to be a lot more single parents about than there used to be,” Sheila said.

"There have been quite a lot of redundancies and we’ve have had quite a few people saying their benefits have been stopped.

“If it’s decided at the interview that they are fit for work, then their incapacity benefit stops dead and they have to wait two or three weeks for a new benefit to kick in and in that time they haven’t got any food.”

In the same six months, figures from the Trussell Trust, the UK’s largest organiser of food banks, show that almost 14,000 people in the West Midlands have had to use such facilities.

They provide a set menu of non-perishable goods only, such as soup, rice, pasta sauces and cereal.

Below is a video explaining the food bank process by Kieren McNally:

“I had one lad in last week and he’d been sleeping rough in a tent in a woods,” Sheila added. “He was in quite a state when he came in and he’d been given a voucher by the Department for Work and Pensions.

“The first thing to do was give him something hot because he was so damn cold!

“It really upset me to see that a man in his 40s was living like that.”

Since opening in July, the Silverdale Distribution Centre has fed 166 adults and 86 children.

“You do take it home with you and feel it if someone comes and opens up to you,” Sheila said. “We don’t want to feel that we’re just a place where people come to the door and are given a bag of food and go away again. We want to do something more than that.”

The centre hosts the food bank between 10am and 12pm on Fridays.

Click below to see photos from the centre: