Good afternoon, I hope you manage to survive the heatwave and we are hopefully now back to a sensible level!

It certainly was tough for our Warehouse team sorting donations and packing Boxes in that heat, as well as the van crew loading the van and delivering the boxes to our centres. We are so grateful for all they do in these hot conditions, Ceri does all she can to get the fans going before they arrive to keep the building cool! The van crew continually mention the comfort cooling rather than the air conditioning on the van, not sure what they are on about, as the windows do open and the fan works!

With the hot temperatures meant that our centres had a mixed week with Saturday being quite quiet across all our centres.

This week we received our data pack from Trussell, this gives us a good insight to the people we are serving across Thurrock.

We are now interacting with 94 referral agencies, thanks to Kate's hard work developing a wider network of referral agencies. This also includes 13 schools that have issued vouchers to their parents that need help this since April 2025.

Sadly once fact that still remains is that 56% of the people coming to Thurrock Foodbank are coming for the first time, as they seek help for their situation.

Sadly one thing that was confirmed is that our donations are significantly down, and we are struggling to make up our standard food parcels!

We have a growing list of low stock items required to make up our food parcels, these items are:
Tinned Meats (currys, Stew, Spaghetti Bolognese etc)
Long Life Milk,
Tinned Soups,
Tinned Fish,
Desserts (Custard, Rice Pudding, Jellies, Sponge Puddings)
Tinned Potatoes

Noodles

Chocolate

Tea & Coffee