Sudbury food banks work to make sure products are distributed fairly to those in need

As campaigns to collect food for those in need start to get into full swing, one food bank in Sudbury says it's important to have a system in place to make sure the donations get to the right people.

Inner City Homes of Sudbury helps about 850 people a month with crisis food assistance.

Mary Ali, the executive director, says unfortunately, some people try to abuse the system. She says the centre asks to see identification for every family member and proof of income.

"We started doing that because their income statement will show the dependents on that statement," she explained.

"Not so much because we were worried how much money they were making, but we just wanted to make sure that if they told us they had four children, that they did in fact have four children living with them, depending on them for basic necessities."

Ali says when the system was first set up, staff did find discrepancies in the number of children people reported to have compared to how many they actually had. She says now, that doesn't happen too often.

She adds there are also measures in place so people can't go to several food banks in the same month.

"Everyone has to input their stats everyday, their client cards," Ali said.

"If we're unsure if a person has used more than one food bank, we can go to that system and that will tell us if someone has gone to a different food bank yesterday or this morning.  And we just advise the client of the same."

Ali says food banks are happy to help those in need, but adds these agencies are only meant to be a "stopgap measure."

"It's only meant to help people get over that difficult time in the month," she said.

"It's not meant to be a crutch. It's not meant to encourage use so that possibly they use that money for other needs."

Ali says awareness of the food banks is always front and centre over the holidays, but it's in the new year that donations drop off and the need increases.