How did I get here? Gill Oliver meets charity worker Jane Benyon

Looking back at Jane Benyon’s long career, it’s all been about helping people.

The former social worker is the chairwoman of Cowley-based Community Emergency Foodbank, which handed out 3,000 food parcels last year.

Run from St Francis Church in Hollow Way, it is a lifeline for people from all walks of life who find themselves in dire straits.

Back in the 1970s, she worked with Witney-based mental health charity, The Guidepost Trust, which later became Advanced Housing.

That led to her becoming a mental health commissioner, when the 1983 Mental Health Act came into force.

The 67-year-old said: “Going into places like Broadmoor was a sobering experience.”

That prompted her to train as a social worker and she worked for Buckinghamshire County Council for 15 years.

She specialised in helping those with mental health issues, particularly older people.

Six years ago, she moved with her family to Oxfordshire and shortly afterwards took early retirement.

During a visit to Chicago, she saw how much foodbanks helped local communities and that was the catalyst to start one here.

She said: “Foodbanks were almost unheard of in Britain at that point.

“People didn’t understand and there was a lot of resistance.

“There was an attitude of ‘what on earth are you doing? This is Oxfordshire. Everyone here has enough to eat’.”

There has been a huge rise in demand for the Hollow Way foodbank, with the number of people coming through its doors up by 70 per cent since 2012.

It frustrates her when she reads reports that foodbanks are not needed.

She pointed out: “Most people are there because they are desperately in need, there is no question of that.

“I have huge empathy for them.”

She was brought up in the Scottish borders and left school after A-Levels.

Now a mother of four grown-up children, she also has 10 grandchildren.

She lives in Bladon with her husband Tom, who was Conservative MP for Abingdon from 1979 to 1983.

A founder of charity Zane International, he founded The Guidepost Trust.

The couple are trustees of each others’ charities and often ‘talk shop’.

And there is no chance of her hanging up her hat and quitting the foodbank any time soon.

She added: “I have always had a great heart for people who are marginalised.

“And people with mental health problems are particularly vulnerable.

“Given that I am in my mid-60s, it depends how much longer I can go on.

“But there is no question that the need is there more than ever.”