Sunday, April 20, 2014

That Mail On Sunday Article Attacking Food Banks Just Made The Charity's Donations Rise 500%

The Trussell Trust has recieved a surge in public donations following the publication of a widely-criticised article attacking the charity.

Volunteer Vanessa Dickson, 58, helps pick food from the shelves ready to be given to a family at the Bromley Borough Foodbank in Orpington, part of The Trussell Trust.

Andrew Matthews/PA Wire

A food bank charity has seen a more than six-fold increase in the number of donations in the space of a few hours since the publication of a Mail On Sunday article criticising it.

justgiving.com

The Mail On Sunday today published an investigation into the Trussell Trust - a charity which distributes emergency food packages to impoverished people - in which its reporter received a food package after claiming to be an unemployed father of two who was struggling to make ends meet.

The article criticised both the Trussell Trust and the Citizen's Advice Bureau - which is also an independent charity - for failing to carry out sufficient background checks on people using its service to verify whether they were genuinely in need of emergency food supplies.

The article also used its findings to cast doubt on the Trust's widely reported claims that almost a million people would use one of its food bank this year, an increase of 163% on the previous year, and part of a trend that has seen use of the Trust's food banks increase tenfold since 2010.