Vienna
Registered Shopper
- Joined
- Oct 25, 2012
- Messages
- 6,008
Just like everything else in life a foodbank can be abused by a minority but that doesn`t mean you stop having them. I worked at a Salvation Army homeless hostel for 13 years and we also had a foodbank attached to the building. Whether it was needed by a genuine parent who`se benefit hadn`t arrived ( back in the days of giros ) or a feckless parent who`d spent all of that week`s money on cigs, booze and phone credit, quite often the people most in need are their children. Close the foodbanks and many children will go hungry, it`s as simple as that.
In a perfect World everybody would have enough money to live on and every person would know how to budget and stay debt free but sadly that isn`t the case. What people should do and what they actually do, are 2 different things. Many schools now run breakfast clubs offering free cereal or toast because a number of kids aren`t fed in the morning and even those parents who genuinely hate being on benefits and would give their children their last morsal and go hungry themselves quite often have to decide whether to keep a house warm or buy extra food because they can`t afford both.
There used to be workhouses, there`s always been soup kitchens, there used to be local shops which allowed tick until payday and there used to be close families who helped each other through thick and thin but many of those have been and gone. There`s always been poverty and there always will be but in my mind an adult can be answerable for their own actions but their children should never be answerable for the parents actions.
In a perfect World everybody would have enough money to live on and every person would know how to budget and stay debt free but sadly that isn`t the case. What people should do and what they actually do, are 2 different things. Many schools now run breakfast clubs offering free cereal or toast because a number of kids aren`t fed in the morning and even those parents who genuinely hate being on benefits and would give their children their last morsal and go hungry themselves quite often have to decide whether to keep a house warm or buy extra food because they can`t afford both.
There used to be workhouses, there`s always been soup kitchens, there used to be local shops which allowed tick until payday and there used to be close families who helped each other through thick and thin but many of those have been and gone. There`s always been poverty and there always will be but in my mind an adult can be answerable for their own actions but their children should never be answerable for the parents actions.