More Families Turning to Food Banks to Feed Children

The number of families who feed their children at soup kitchens and food banks in Ventura County is growing, according to a new University of California study.

Families, sometimes including working adults and their children, account for nine out of every 10 people who benefit from emergency food programs in the county, reported the study released this week by the UC Cooperative Extension office in Ventura.

Officials estimate that more than half of the people who benefit from local food banks each month are under 18. A large proportion of the children, about 42%, were age 12 and under, the study said. About 88,000 people use food banks each month in Ventura County.

Ventura was one of 19 counties throughout the state that participated in the UC study, which was designed to identify people who use food banks, with the aim of developing programs to help them.

The county showed the highest proportion of families relying on emergency food programs to feed their children--about 92% of the total, said Shirley Peterson, a home economist with the UC Cooperative Extension in Ventura.

But a lot of children are going hungry. The study said about one-third of the parents occasionally sent their children to bed without food.

The UC study was conducted in 1988. Researchers surveyed 144 people who visited food banks and soup kitchens around the county.

Peterson said it took two years to compile the research because of a backlog of data at the Berkeley office analyzing the data. But administrators of food banks around the county said the study only confirms personal observations they have been making for years.

With the recent economic downturn, the number of families who feed their children at soup kitchens and food banks has probably increased, they said. Families hard hit by recent company layoffs and the devastating December freeze have begun flooding food banks since November, one food bank administrator said.

“We used to say, when we helped 300 to 400 a month, it was a lot of people. Now it’s 1,000,” said Pauline Saterbo, administrator of Manna, a Thousand Oaks food bank. “At least three-quarters of the people who come in are feeding families. They’re feeding at least four people.”

Jewel Pedi, executive director of Food Share, said the number of families seeking food at 163 distribution centers that her agency supplies has grown over the past year.

The University of California report dashes the notion that people who use food banks are unemployed, single and homeless people, she said.

A large number of those who asked for aid are the working poor, people who earn minimum or near-minimum wages and who can afford to pay rent, but cannot afford to feed their children, Pedi said.

“It was amazing to see how many children were involved,” Pedi said. “With the freeze and the migrant farm workers in this county, we might see a lot more involved.”

Pedi said the freeze is expected to directly affect Food Share’s gleaning program, an effort involving volunteers who collect crop yields from fields after they have been commercially harvested. Farms hard hit by the freeze have fewer crops that can be reaped by volunteer crews to supply food banks around the county. Last year, the gleaning program supplied 6.9 million pounds of food to the needy. This year, that amount is expected to decline.

Across the state, the increasing demand on emergency food centers was exacerbated by recent events such as the freeze, a UC analyst said.

“Because of the winter freeze, and the destruction of crops . . . there’s a terrific increase on the demand for emergency food,” said Anne Wright, acting supervisor for the university’s Expanded Food and Nutrition Education Program, which is sponsoring the study. “If anything, it may be a worse picture now.”

The University of California study will be presented to the County Board of Supervisors to help develop programs for the hungry, Peterson said. A date has not yet been scheduled, she said.