Danii Fletcher-Horn can still remember the moment she realised that thousands of families were truly in crisis across the UK.
‘A mother had been moved into an empty house with her newborn baby,’ she explains to Metro.co.uk. ‘There was no furniture or carpets and she slept on the floor with her baby on her chest.’
Danii isn’t a social worker or a housing officer, but a mum of four who decided to set up a baby bank from her own garage in a desperate bid to help families in need.
Talking about the young mum she helped, she says, ‘When we got to her, she’d not eaten in days and was desperate to get formula milk for her baby.’
Across the UK, there are currently an estimated 200 baby banks, including Danii’s, now operating.
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Although she had originally set up a small donation project from her garage back in 2019 to collect nappies, milk and wipes, demandfor help soon saw Danii’s project expand, and her baby bank AberNecessities has since helped over 10,000 children across Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire.
‘I wanted to do something but the need for help continues to rise month-on-month,’ she says. ‘We’ve expanded out of my garage to a larger drop-off point and we have a great deal of community support. But I have witnessed heartbreaking tales of tragedy and can say with certainty that we are in a crisis.’
Danii’s background was as a specialist early intervention teacher in secondary schools and she says one of the things she noted was how living without the basics could have a huge impact on a young person’s mental health.
As well as the challenges of the cost of living, she explains that many new families are also struggling to cope with the prices of baby formula skyrocketing – with the cheapest brand reportedly rising by 45% in the last two years.
To make matters worse, current government policy prohibits the promotion of formula and therefore retailers do not include it in their loyalty card schemes or offer price promotions or reductions.
‘One of the things many families I see struggle to afford is baby formula,’ she explains. ‘What’s so infuriating is they aren’t even able to use the gift cards or vouchers we have donated to buy the formula because that’s also restricted.
‘It makes me so angry because every woman should have a choice in how they feed their baby. I’ve had mothers on their last feed of formula crying on the phone to us about how they’ll cope.
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‘We’ve seen stories in the news about families watering formula down or stealing it. People are desperate and need support.’
‘The tragic thing was this was often families who were desperate to give their children everything but sadly didn’t have the means to,’ she says. ‘It wasn’t a simple case of neglect. Since launching AberNecessities, I’ve seen some awful situations.’
Danii says she shares the story of the mum living with no furniture because people need to realise the woman was ‘so depleted and starving, she had nothing in her to breastfeed. And that’s what people need to understand.’
She adds: ‘Breastfeeding can be wonderful and an incredible journey but it’s not always the case for every woman.’
As a mother herself to children Freddie, seven, Nancy, five, Albie, three and Vinnie, one, Danii experienced her own problems with breastfeeding and made the decision to formula feed – something she says she felt unfair judgement and stigma around.
‘I personally experienced significant challenges with breastfeeding, to the extent my mental health was impacted,’ she explains. ‘I’m lucky to have a phenomenal support system; my husband and family were always there to help me, and yet at times I still felt quite vulnerable and alone.’
Following the launch of Metro.co.uk’s Formula For Change campaign, in partnership with Feed, Danii hopes the government will take this issue seriously and overturn the current policy that puts so many barriers in place for retailers and formula.
‘A mother shouldn’t have to defend her choice to formula feed but I wish people who were negative about it could hear some of the stories that we hear at AberNecessities,’ she says.
‘Mums whose babies were born prematurely and therefore the milk didn’t come in. Mums whose mental health was so poor, they suffered psychosis and were hospitalised, leaving the fathers or other family to care for the baby. Who can breastfeed in that scenario?’
‘I know that overturning this government policy on formula and allowing people to purchase with gift cards or vouchers and using their points to buy it would help massively,’ Danii adds. ‘It could allow a grandmother who is struggling on her pension a way to buy a tub of formula for her daughter. It could help a family budget for their weekly spend.
And for us as a baby bank, it could give us peace of mind that when we’re giving out supermarket vouchers we know that’s helping a baby be fed.’
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