A huge thank-you again to all our donors for all your ongoing support and continued generous donations throughout the summer.  Your kindness has meant that, during the summer we have been able to continue to meet the demand we have faced from our 14 distribution centres across Wirral, which give out the food you have kindly donated.  The strict voucher system which we operate means that each client receives enough food to last them and their families for 3 days. A core feature of our system is the “three day vouchers guideline,” which allows those referral organisations who hold our vouchers to issue up to three vouchers to an individual or family within a 6 month period.  In most cases this gets clients through the unexpected difficulty which has left them without any money for food. If, however, the client’s crisis has not been resolved we will work with the referral organisation to agree how best we can support them.    In some cases where our clients have much more fundamental problems such as serious debt or are homeless, our centres are encouraged to signpost them to the other agencies who will be able help them further.   

We have been looking at a breakdown of the figures for the donations which we receive, and these show that approximately 65%   of all the food given to our foodbank comes from the churches, businesses, and other organisations who regularly bring their donated food and other goods to our warehouse.  Wirral Foodbank is one of the largest in the North West, so this is a tremendous achievement, and we are proud to be supported by you all.

We decided to prepare some material for local schools at Harvest Festival, in case the children were interested to know what the Foodbank does.  This was very well received, with many schools saying that they found the material both interesting and helpful.  It has prompted visits to the warehouse from several schools to see first-hand what we do.  If you are interested in the material we produced about how the Foodbank works, it can be found on our website wirral.foodbank.org.uk under “Give Help” – Harvest 2016.

Thank you all for the Harvest donations which have already started coming in to the warehouse from churches and also from schools.  This will help us to match the increase in clients coming to us for help which always happens in the autumn, as temperatures begin to fall.  We are pleased to be able to say that stocks of essential items are good at the moment, and so we are prepared.  The amount of food needed by the centres will remain high during the winter.  

Finally, unfortunately we had no success with any Liverpool food manufacturers agreeing to donate food to us, but a local milk supplier continues to give the Foodbank very generous support.

So far this year we have fed and supported 8,944 people. Without your continuing generosity we could not operate.

Hopefully with the support of all of our kind donors, we will be able to get through the coming winter.

Thank you all again!

Wirral Foodbank Volunteers and Trustees