Desperate mothers are 'eating donated baby food', says charity founder

Desperate mothers are resorting to eating baby food because they have nothing else, a charity founder has said.

Hayley Jones, who founded The Nappy Project, gave the example in an interview as she described the dire straits some of the families her charity helps in Stoke-on-Trent.

The Nappy Project supplies nappies, wipes and baby food to families living in poverty, but Hayley said some mums were having to eat the food that had been donated to the charity.

Speaking to BBC Midlands Today, Hayley said: “These families are eating baby food because that's the only food they're going to have in the house.”

She told the BBC: “You look at some women and you can see they’re broken and you can’t do anything to save all of them.

“And the hardest bit is when you see somebody and you know what you need to do and you know what you need to give them and you know how to help.

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“But you can only give them what they’re asking for because you know if you do that they’ll come back and we just want them to come back because as long as they turn up here and we can see them we can just help them.

“The day they don’t turn back, come here, then what?”

In December a new Dispatches documentary showed how a young family who live on £5 per day and sleep in their coats had nearly £10,000 raised by fundraisers who were moved by their story.