[Vicky.]

Originally Posted by LeatherTrumpet

what about people who get enough money for food and then blow it on gambling, drink, fags etc?

Just seen this...whilst of course, there are bad apples in any bunch and to deny some people spend wages/benefits on loads of unneeded stuff whilst claiming poverty would be ridiculous, people like this would be highly unlikely to get a referral. And a referral is needed, you can't just walk in and demand a food parcel.

We once had to use a foodbank, a few years back when I became ill and there was a 3 month delay in processing my ESA claim.

We had to give bank statements and such, to prove we had not just had income and spent it irresponsibly. We had to prove that cash we had got in the weeks prior had not been spent on stuff like drink. As I recall, we actually had a bit of a problem as we were on key/card gas and electric and there was 50 quid 'unaccounted for' and of course we did not have a receipt for the gas/electric we had topped up, as...why keep receipts once the credit is on? Local shop redid them for us as I live in a relatively small village and they knew us and remembered us topping up. But I am fairly sure we would not have got the referral had we not been able to provide that receipt