We’re delighted to be re-opening our face-to-face food bank welcome centres from Monday 20 September, after almost 18 months of delivering emergency food to people’s doorsteps – and more than 16,000 emergency food supplies delivered across Wandsworth borough.
We’re adding two new welcome centres in neighbourhoods where relatively high numbers of people and families are facing financial hardship and need for our support: in Roehampton and on the Patmore estate in north Battersea. You can find details about our welcome centre locations here.
We’re really looking forward to welcoming people referred to us at the centre that is most convenient for them. It’s an opportunity to get the immediate practical help they need in terms of emergency food and essential toiletries, as well as a chance to chat with our friendly, trained volunteers about the difficulties people are facing and what help is available.
Our food bank advisers will be present at each welcome session to offer expert advice and casework to help people resolve the problems that are causing financial hardship and food bank need – most commonly around benefit payments, for instance when people have lost jobs or hours, or are too unwell to work.
Nearly 300 referral partners across the borough will continue to use our online food bank e-vouchers to refer people in need to us. We’ll phone everyone when we receive their e-voucher, to book them into the welcome centre that’s best for them. This will help us to manage numbers at each centre and ensure we’re keeping guests and volunteers as safe as possible as the pandemic continues. We’re asking all guests and volunteers to continue to wear masks at our welcome centres, in order to care for and protect each other.
If you’re facing severe financial hardship and need help and support, please visit our Get Help page to find out how we can help. You’ll also find information about Wandsworth Council’s support grants for residents in hardship, which we recommend applying for. They’re grants not loans, so you won’t need to pay them back.
If you’d like to give to support your neighbours experiencing poverty and hardship through our food bank, thank you. You can find more about different ways to give and get involved here.
For further information about our re-opening of centres, please email [email protected] or phone us 020 7326 9428.
