"How as a community can we effect change?"

How as a community can we effect change? We can do this initially by talking to people in our local communities about how they feel about food banks having to be used in 2019. By identifying and involving the people and organisations who have an interest in food banks, we can determine if they too think that this is unacceptable in 2019 and how we might go about eradicating the need. We do need to identify any barriers that will stop local participation in the discussion.

From our questionnaire, it is obvious that people may be too embarrassed to ask for help. To help overcome this, for example, we could arrange meetings at a time when as many people as possible can attend and/or provide childcare; as it was identified in our research that 36% of parcels went to families with children.

Forming an action group to meet up with like-minded individuals to tackle the issue and invite representatives from the DWP and the Council to our meetings, to let them know what the issues are will also help. Involving professional bodies will also help take ideas forward as they will have more resources. Pressure can be applied to our local councillors by raising the issue of the 'working poor' at community councils.

On social media such as Facebook, Instagram and similar sites, we can highlight the problems that families and individuals are facing in the local community. We can make use of group members' talents and interests to produce art work and offer a 'listening ear' for example. The people who are most affected by the existence or otherwise of food banks, are the people we need to engage. We need to be asking them what they want, not impose our own ideas. We need to begin!