SVdP Family Support Center - The Client Choice Food Pantry

The Client Choice Food Pantry operates as a customer-choice model, operating more like a grocery store, allowing clients to ‘shop' with a trained volunteer. Clients have a broader choice among the food items provided This honors and enhances the dignity and ethnic diversity of the people served, promotes more efficient distribution of our donated resources and minimizes waste. Visitors or those referred to the Family Support Center are interviewed to assess the situation to determine how the Support Center can best respond. The FSC's goal is to provide long-lasting solutions that will help guests move beyond the crisis or cycle in which they feel entrapped. A primary focus of the Support Center is to provide food. After the initial interview, clients are invited to shop in the Client-Choice Food Pantry with a volunteer's help and obtain food that is determined by a "point system." In order to help client retain as much of the monthly funds as possible, clients are screened for benefits. Once qualified the benefit frees up money that can be transferred to other budgetary needs. The FSC is able to screen individuals for government or community benefits, determine eligibility and advance the application more quickly through the process.