Generous patients of Hull GP practices pull out the stops for food bank collections

A primary care network (PCN) covering five GP surgeries in Hull asked patients to donate any items being requested by Hull Food Bank as part of World Food Bank Day.

Little did the co-ordinators at Kingston Health Hull, in Holderness Road, know what the response would be. The appeal snowballed, with other PCNs across the city wanting to take part.

The resulting collections have filled about 50 crates and generated seven car-loads of urgently-needed items for those facing hardship. Jenni Dobson, care co-ordinator at Hull Association of Similar Practices (HASP) PCN said: “We cover five GP surgeries in Hull and asked our patients to donate any food they could from the list that Hull Food Bank provided us with for World Food Bank Day, on September 6.

“We also spread this initiative to other PCNs in the city and we have collected an incredible amount.” An initial number of collection crates went out after Jenni’s manager, Emma Bailey, made contact and found that practices wanted to be involved.

Eight crates went to each of the HASP surgeries - Kingston Health East and West, Orchard 2000 Hall Road and Bransholme Health Centre, Goodhart Surgery, in Bransholme Health Centre, Dr Raut Partnership in Highlands Health Centre in Wawne and on Sutton Park and Laurbel Surgery in Bilton. “Dr Joseph Witney asked for four for the Haxby surgeries and Sarah Capes, BeWell health and wellbeing service team leader for Venn PCN, asked for six crates for their surgeries,” Jenni said.

“Vicky Whittles, social prescribing team leader/deputy hub manager asked for five crates for the Symphonie sites and Colette Kipling, admin manager asked for four crates for the Hull Family Practice sites.

“The response has been phenomenal, with us filling more than double this initial number of crates. We ended up with 23 collection points in total and, after seeing the Hull Food Bank distribution centre for ourselves, we can see how far these donations will actually go.”

The co-ordinators are eager to learn how many emergency food parcels the donations will create. Jenni said: “Once collected, Hull Food Bank will let us know how many parcels the donations will make up, as they go by weight, we're excited to have the final number.”

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Jenni said the response had been “absolutely amazing” right across the city. “We don’t know who it was but one patient who donated at one of our surgeries had gone into Asda and spent £500 on food.”

The communications sent out to patients about the donations also advised on what they should do if they needed help themselves. Jenni said: “Before Covid, Hull Food Bank was giving out 5,000 food parcels a year; it was more than 11,000 last year.”

She said: “Hopefully we will be doing another event for the next World Food Bank Day next year. We do have some other things we want to do for different charities.”