S-O-T Foodbank 

February 2021
In 2020 the social and economic impact of Covid-19 was far-reaching, and still is -job losses, reduced hours and delays in benefit payments has meant that thousands of people have not had enough money for the basics. Currently, over 68,000 people locally are over-indebted, in other words unable to pay current bills. Over one third of local children are in food poverty – facing uncertainty about where the next meal will come from.
Thanks to generous support of donors and volunteers, and our determination to quickly adapt to Covid-19 safe practices, we have been able to continue to do this throughout 2020, and into 2021 ensuring that no one has to face going hungry. In 2020 we fed 14,000 people, 1,552 in December alone.
Our centres quickly adapted to Covid-19 safe working practices; with many frontline services that usually refer people to us not able to work face to face, to combat this we extended our staffing capacity to assist people in food crisis. We moved from a paper to a digital e-voucher system. Follow-on help has continued, with leaflets and telephone conversations communicating this.