On the website it is very clear wether you are on there to find out information, to get help or to give help. And when looking into the information on the website I can see that in Coventry, which is a quite large city but not one of the largest in the country, it has 18 food bank distribution centres which I am quite shocked to see so many places which provide this service in the city. You can see this on the map below.
The list of the different places which run food banks in Coventry are Covenrry Jesus Centre, Redeemed Christian Church of God, St Owalds Church of England, Willenhall Foodbank, Fosehill Baptist Church, Bethel Evangelical Church, SDC (Zion) Church, Walsgrave Baptist Church, Hebron Christian Faith Church, Lawrence Saunders Road Baptist Church, Hope Centre, Allesley Park Evangelical Church, Queens Road Baptist Church, Coventry City Mission, St Catherines Church of England, Church of God of Prophecy, Canley Family Centre and Keresley Village.
And from just looking at that list I'm surprised to see that nearly all of the places that host the different food bank collection points in Coventry are Churches of some kind. All of them run of different days during the week so the client will always be able to make it to one of them.
After a quick search through news stories I found this one which is quite worrying for the Coventry area and suggests why there is 18 collection points around the city even though its not that large.
This article was published a few months ago but it shows you the major problems that Coventry has in terms of needing food support, the article even states that the 'Coventry people rely on foodbank more than anywhere else across the West Midlands'. It went onto saying a total of 7,130 people used the service at the Moasic Church, Hillfields between April and September 2015.
Reece Dry commented upon the food bank situation in Coventry saying, "The national minimum wage is such if you've got a large family, and once the bills have gone out, there's not a lot of money left. Without the foodbank it would be very hard for people, I'm not too sure what they would do."
Adrian Curtis (UK foodbank director) said "Latest foodbank figures are still at worryingly high levels." " Several foodbanks are reporting that some agencies and charities who would normally refer people in crisis to foodbanks have been unable to do so because funding reductions have caused their services to be squeezed or closed." He goes onto say, "When the proposed changes to tax credits are implemented, we are concerned that more working families will not be able to make ends meet, and that we could see a substantial rise in foodbank use as a result."
What this article and research has shown me is that poverty in the UK and in Coventry is growing, with more people relying on the foodbank service for desperate food support. It has also shown me that due to cuts in the government, other charities and agencies are facing lack of funding which is increasing the need for the food bank. And also these large figures are predicted to increase with the proposed changes to tax credits are implemented. Overall, I think this is as important to document as my last section to this current problem which looked at how homeless people are living on the streets in Manchester. I will need to think about how I gain access to these foodbanks to begin documenting the help that they are providing people who are on the poverty line including homeless people.