This week Fife’s Cottage Family Centre extends its pilot to help families in need into a fully-fledged anti-poverty programme.
It will expand its support from 35,000 families in Fife to a total of 50,000 families across central Scotland.
The innovative project allows Fife families to draw on what is a multi-bank – a food bank, bedding bank, clothes bank, toiletries bank, home furnishings bank and heating bank, all rolled into one.
It is based in a huge warehouse in Lochgelly and filled with surplus goods thanks to Amazon’s Dunfermline depot and 12 other local companies.
Since last December, 230,000 goods worth £5 million have gone to families in need.
The Cottage Family Centre, of which I am proud to be patron, has a long history of innovation.
With its breakfast clubs, after-school clubs, and mother and toddler groups now complemented by a pioneering dads’ club, grannies’ club and its own team of mental health counsellors, no local family centre I know has been more creative in helping families do more with less.
Fife charity being helped by range of businesses
They reported their progress to a conference of charities, business and councillors in Kirkcaldy on Tuesday evening, in the presence of the managing directors of companies including Amazon, Fishers Laundry and Scotmid.
What is brilliant is the range of Fife organisations now using the warehouse for supplies.
It totals 150 schools, nine food banks, 60 local charities, and 200 health workers, social work teams and health centres.
Fully 500 organisations have now been able to receive everything from duvets and beds to nappies, toilet rolls, children’s clothes, kettles and microwaves.
This has been made possible with the support of local foundations, especially the Northwood Trust, the Orchard Foundation and the Robertson Trust, as well as Fife Council.
And this has taken the family centre from being one of the smallest local charities, with 30 staff, to being among the county’s biggest with a £5m turnover of goods.
But our aim is to do more than just hand out goods from the central warehouse based in Lochgelly.
The Cottage staff have enlisted local teams of volunteer painters, plumbers, and electricians to improve their homes.
With items like paint, wallpaper and carpets delivered to families unable to afford basic home maintenance, there is the chance to repair and refurbish homes room by room.
Ambitious plans are also in hand to extend the help to gardens and the planting of allotments – again, with the help of local firms, including Purvis of Lochgelly, which has also gifted the use of a major warehouse.
Charities struggling to meet scale of people’s needs
Brilliant charities, local businesses and a supportive Fife Council are helping people through the most difficult of years and I have never seen such generous philanthropic giving to people in need.
Often the gifts are coming from people who have little themselves.
I have seen struggling one-man electrical businesses offering support to hard-pressed families, just as I have seen superstores stepping up with their surplus goods.
But as extensive as it is, our projects are exposing the scale of the country’s unmet needs and revealing the limits of what charities can do when faced with the exorbitant rises in fuel and food bills facing so many households.
Outstanding news @RobertsonTrust has awarded £100,000 to our new project The Big Hoose which has seen multi million pounds worth of household goods from retailers such as Amazon, Fishers & the Paint Shed being distributed to children & families living in poverty across Fife🙏❤️ pic.twitter.com/QXldKEeUE0
— The Cottage Family Centre (@cottage_centre) August 12, 2022
As is the case across the country, our local foodbank run by dedicated volunteers has grown from one to four outlets, and has seen a 50% increase in traffic this year alone.
Its balance sheet is clearly buckling under the pressure, with £20,000 a month in food costs leading to a £56,000 deficit this year.
But for every charity, fundraising is becoming ever more difficult since they are chasing the same dwindling pots of funding.
Some charities, like a local welfare fund I know, have found themselves flat-out broke.
And the scale of the gap between need and provision is growing every month.
Specific help needed from UK Government
I estimate this charitable assistance can put an additional £10 million into Fife this year. But this sum cannot compensate for the £76m that 35,000 Fife families are short of year to year.
This includes £30m from the loss of £20 a week in Universal Credit last October, and £46m resulting from the gap between a 3% rise in benefits and inflation’s 10%.
Families are seeing the biggest-ever cut in their standards of living.
And no matter how much Amazon, local companies, hard-pressed charities and philanthropic individuals try to match help to need they are fighting a losing battle.
Our hope is that the UK Government will not only have an emergency package but will direct very specific help to local families who are £30 to £40 a week short even before the latest rise in the energy cap.
This Tory government has taken the summer off.
It cannot afford to waste another moment if we are to avoid the harshest of winters.
Conversation