It is very important to us that we continue to provide our Foodbank service to our community, and the wonderful team at the foodbank have, with robust Covid procedures in place, continued to open as normal throughout the pandemic so far and for this we are extremely grateful to them. However, after careful consideration of the current Covid-19 status and the need to keep our clients, volunteers, and staff as safe as possible, we have decided that from Tuesday 19 January 2021 we will temporarily move to a ‘Delivery Only’ service and this means that our foodbank outlets in Folkestone, New Romney, and Lydd will be closed from Sat 16 Jan until further notice.
We are very pleased that through the new delivery service, we are able to continue to support those most in need in our community with food parcels, whilst also caring for the safety of these clients and all those people who give their time to run this service.
How will it work?
Clients will still need to be issued a voucher as before, but the old red paper voucher system will not be able to be used with the new delivery service. Most of our referral agencies have already been set up as e-voucher referrers and are therefore able to issue vouchers online. Once issued, the E-voucher logs onto our system immediately, and then, instead of the client collecting the food from our foodbank outlets, our Foodbank team will retrieve the voucher electronically and pack, transport, and deliver the food parcel to the client’s doorstep, or an agreed place if a client is homeless.
Food parcels will be delivered during each foodbank’s usual opening hours. Folkestone on Tuesdays & Fridays, New Romney on Tuesdays, and Lydd on Fridays. Vouchers will need to be with the team by 11am on the day of delivery to enable the parcels to be made up to go out on the van, anything received after this time will be delivered on the foodbank’s next delivery session.
Anyone who needs our support but cannot access a referral agency can contact the Foodbank Manager directly on 07913 573403 for assistance.
