More and more people in Wandsworth, and indeed the whole country, have become increasingly reliant on foodbanks over the past few years. However, many people are unaware that foodbanks exist, or are not entirely sure what running a foodbank or relying on one involves. We spoke to Sarah Chapman, Wandsworth Foodbank Trustee, to find out more.

Hi Sarah, thanks for talking to us. So, why do people use foodbanks?

Across the country, there’s been a dramatic rise in people needing to use foodbanks in the last few years. Rising costs of food, fuel and housing have hit the poorest households hardest, and these, combined with the impact and implementation of welfare reform, have left too many people struggling to feed their families.

In Wandsworth Borough, 44% of people we help are referred because of benefit delay and change, including sanctions (where some or all of a person’s social security payment is stopped for weeks or months). One in five people we help are referred because of low income, where a person or family’s income hasn’t kept pace with inflation, or because they are working a low-paid zero-hours contract which makes it incredibly difficult to make ends meet. Just last week we helped a diabetic gentleman who was referred to us after he was hospitalised with complications caused by not having enough food to eat. His benefits had been sanctioned and he'd had no money for food for weeks. It was only thanks to his cousin's persistence in getting him help, and challenging an apparently harsh sanction, that he's hopefully on the road to recovery. We were able to give him a hot drink and emergency food, and information on statutory provisions like hardship payments that unfortunately he hadn't been told about before.

Other people are referred to us because of the impact of domestic violence, debt, homelessness, illness or simply an unexpected and unavoidable bill on a very low income. We've also recently been helping homeless families housed outside of the borough temporarily, who are having to spend all or some of their food budget on bus fares to bring their children back to their school within the borough.

For more info, please see Wandsworth Foodbank’s Food Poverty Report (published summer 2014) and Feeding Britain, the report of the all-party inquiry into food poverty in Britain (published this month).

As well as providing emergency food and support, we are also passionate about reflecting the experiences of local people in crisis to local and national government with the hope and aim that local and national safety nets will be strengthened to care for the poorest and most vulnerable of our neighbours.

How can people be referred to a foodbank?

Wandsworth Foodbank has nearly 180 local frontline care professionals who can refer their clients in crisis to us, by issuing a uniquely-serial numbered Foodbank voucher (which people can exchange for food at any of our five Foodbank centres across the Borough).

These frontline professionals include many Wandsworth primary and secondary schools, children’s centres, GPs, advice agencies like Age UK and Citizen’s Advice Bureau, social workers, hospital teams including at St George’s and Springfield, housing officers and Wandsworth Council welfare reform and financial inclusion teams.

People can’t just walk into Trussell Trust foodbanks, like Wandsworth Foodbank – everyone has to be referred.

How many people/families per month rely on Foodbanks in Wandsworth?

We provide emergency food and support to nearly 250 local people a month, and about 40% of those we feed are children. We try to keep a high volunteer to guest ratio so that people can stay and chat, and find help to address the underlying causes of their crisis, for as long as they'd like to.

How many sites do you have in Wandsworth?

We have five Foodbank centres based in local churches across Wandsworth – in St Mark’s Battersea Rise (where the Foodbank office is), Shaftesbury Christian Centre in north Battersea, The Yard in Putney, St Paul’s in Tooting and St Michael’s in Southfields. We’re really grateful that these churches all provide the space for storage and hosting the foodbank session free of charge, which is amazing.

The foodbank centres are situated in or near some of the areas of highest deprivation in the borough, and between us we’re open 7 days a week.

Where the food is sourced from?

We don’t receive any council or government funding, so we’re entirely reliant on the generosity of local people who want to help their neighbours in crisis for financial support and food donations. All the food we give out has been donated by local people, churches, schools and businesses, and at local supermarket collections where shoppers are invited to buy and donate specific items we need.

How people can help/donate/volunteer?

Thanks to the incredible generosity of the community at Harvest and in the run-up to Christmas, we’re currently really well-stocked for food.

However if people would like to help, we’d love people to consider making a single or regular donation of money to help towards our running costs.

For more info, people can go to our website at wandsworth.foodbank.org.uk, follow us on Twitter and you can see us in action when we recently had a visit from Channel 4 news.