THE founder of an Oxfordshire food bank has welcomed proposals for on-site job advisers but warned more needs to be done to link up volunteers with public services.

Jo Cypher, who runs Oxfordshire West Food Bank, said volunteers wanted to offer more help to those who came through their doors but often they were not trained and did not have official materials to hand out.

Her comments came as the government said a successful trial scheme in Manchester to place job advisers at food banks was to be rolled out across the rest of the country. The advisers would help those using food banks get back into a job if they are unemployed.

But Ms Cypher said the government needed to go further.

The Oxfordshire West Food Bank, based in Station Lane, Witney, has given out more than 1,000 food parcels in the past three years.

Ms Cypher: “It would be a step in the right direction, because very often the people who come through our doors do not know where to go next.

“We quite often have to tell people we are not qualified to give advice but can point them in the right direction – like to the Citizen’s Advice Bureau or recruitment agencies.

“But we are just here to provide a service. The government needs to do more to make advice services accessible to the people using our food bank and we need to be more linked up with them.

“Even if they just gave us the phone numbers of local advisers and how to speak to them, or leaflets that we could hand out, it would be a big help.

“Advisers are a good idea, but here we have a very small space so I am not sure it would work.

“What we would like is to be able to hand things out with information on them. There needs to be a better system in place.”

The announcement that job advisers are to be placed in food banks across the country was made by Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith this week.

He said he would like a trial scheme in Manchester rolled out nationwide after it was given “very strong feedback”.

Mr Duncan Smith was giving evidence to the Work and Pensions Select Committee. He added: “I am trialling at the moment a job adviser situating themselves in the food bank for the time it is open.”

Robert Devereux, the most senior civil servant in the Department for Work and Pensions, told the MPs staff were in the food bank one day a week. At other times phone lines were made available.

Claimants would be given advice on how to receive welfare payments as well as finding work, he added.