Baby formula crisis: Mum says she feels ‘attacked’ over ‘jaw-dropping’ prices
The magic formula – a disappearing act.
Simon thought he was watching a report about a foreign country, where baby formula was being rationed by charities.
They didn’t have enough to give out to every family who needed it.
When he realised that the Sky News report he was watching last month was actually from Swindon, it stunned him and he decided to do something.
He immediately set up a crowdfund to “provide baby formula to desperate UK parents“.
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‘Are families being exploited? Yes’
“The money started coming in very, very, very quickly because people, like me, they were seeing the video report,” Simon told us.
“People thinking the same as me. How on earth can this be happening in this country?”
Within a few hours his online fundraising appeal was up and running, donations flooding in.
It quickly surpassed his initial target of £10,000 and within just a week or so it hit £50,000.
The fact that so many parents in the UK are struggling to feed their babies resonates. People wanted to help.
Simon is a dad-of-four from Essex who has a track record of online fundraising – he does it to help but to also rile the online trolls who happily take keyboard pot-shots at people who are struggling to make ends meet.
Now just a few weeks later, he’s buying up as much formula as he can get his hands on and distributing tubs locally with the help of Zoey Smith, who can draw on years of experience in the charity sector to get the formula to the right places.
As the forklift loaded the last pallet of boxes onto the van, Zoey mapped out the morning ahead.
People are ‘crying out’ for formula, Zoey Smith told Sky News
Simon and Zoe stand alongside a forklift truck loading up boxes of formula milk
“People have been crying out for it and just been asking ‘where can I get some milk from because I am really struggling’.”
“I think the government needs to do whatever they can do to stop the cost of living crisis, prices going up and particularly look at things like this, the baby milk.”
Simon has also partnered with infant nutrition charity FEED which are administering the bulk of the fund and inviting UK organisations that help families to apply for £250 microgrants for formula milk.
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Rising cost of baby formula ‘utterly shameful’
“It feels good, but you’ve got to look at the long-term picture,” Simon explained.
“You know, I can’t just sit here and raise 50 grand every time another foodbank pops up on Sky News saying, ‘Oh, we can’t give our families formula’.
“It needs proper long-term thinking in terms of the price of formula.”
That’s the problem at the heart of this crisis, some families just can’t afford it.
Mums like 22-year-old Martina, who we met as the delivery van stopped at a foodbank in Southend where she lives.
‘My jaw literally drops’ over formula milk prices
“Something needs to change because every child needs to be fed,” Martina told Sky News
Like so many other parents she now dreads the weekly trip to the supermarket because the prices keep rising.
“My jaw drops, my jaw literally drops,” she tells us – her son is just two months old and fast asleep in the pram.
“It is expensive…very, very expensive. And I do think they’re taking the mick out of it to be honest because it’s ridiculous, especially for people that are struggling.
“It is exploiting us young parents. It does feel like you get attacked, if that makes sense?”
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‘You’re treated as a criminal over milk’
She looks down at her son who is having his nap, oblivious to it all.
“They can’t say anything and someone’s got to speak for them ain’t they? I do wish it wasn’t like that,” Martina says as she loses herself in thought for a moment.
“Something needs to change because every child needs to be fed,” she added.
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Each drop off through the morning follows a theme. Organisations that help young families have hardly any first infant formula left and are so grateful that their stocks have been boosted.
The shelves at the Storehouse foodbank in Southend are pretty bare inside – donations have slowed down and the number of families seeking help keeps growing.
‘We’ve completely run out’
Veronica told Sky News correspondent Tom Parmenter the price of baby essentials is ‘colossal’
Storehouse in Southend
Veronica runs the baby essentials section and told us this week was the “first time in many, many months that we’ve completely run out”.
She added: “But this will make just such a huge difference because people come in, they need to feed their babies, of course they do, and we haven’t been able to give it to them. So this will make a huge difference.
“The trouble with the prices of the nappies, the wipes, the milk. It’s just colossal.”
She then puts the tubs of formula away into the lockable store cupboard.
It’s a precious commodity.
We also stopped at the Megacentre in Rayleigh, where Scott Williamson helps run their operation including the foodbank.
Zoey Smith and Scott Williamson at the Megacentre in Rayleigh
He told us of the calls he’d had from families seeking help that morning.
“A lady just called half an hour ago, she has a newborn baby and she doesn’t have nappies and she doesn’t have milk. We will deliver it to her in her home later on.
“We are able to respond because of the generosity of the community, people like these great guys.”
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At every stop, there’s warm and heartfelt gratitude towards Zoey and Simon as they drop off the baby formula.
That kindness of strangers is now making a positive difference for some families but Simon, and everyone supporting his initiative, realise it’s nowhere near enough.
A judo Olympian has said her family is “devastated” after the discovery of body in the search for her missing brother.
Lubjana Piovesana, 28, appealed for help to find her younger sibling, Luis, 26, on Saturday. He had not been seen since the early hours of Friday morning.
A body was found in the River Frome near Napier Road in Eastville, Bristol, at around 6pm today, Avon and Somerset Police said.
Formal identification is yet to take place, the force added.
In a post on Instagram, Ms Piovesana wrote: “Hello everyone, Luis has been found.
“We are completely devastated but he has passed away.
“I am grateful for everyone’s support. And I am so sorry this happened.
“Luis was my little brother and loved by everyone. I wish he could have seen the love from everyone. He will be remembered by us all.”
The post was signed off with a dove emoji.
Luis Piovesana did not have any money or his mobile phone with him when he went missing, police said. Pics: Avon & Somerset Police
Mr Piovesana was last seen at around 3am on Friday at the Eastgate retail park, which is less than a 10-minute walk away from where the body was found.
He had travelled there by taxi from a venue in Little Ann Street, St Jude’s, a 10-minute drive away.
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The 26-year-old’s family spent the weekend searching for him, and asked people to check their sheds and gardens.
His partner, Laurin Bohler, said loved ones had travelled from Birmingham to help.
Mounted officers and police drones were also involved in the investigation.
Ms Piovesana competed for Team GB before switching to the Austrian team, and defeated British competitor Lucy Renshall in the women’s -63kg judo event at the Paris Olympics last year.
A man has been jailed for life for murdering his son’s girlfriend after she returned home from the school run.
Officers from Dyfed-Powys Police were called to an address on Bigyn Road in Llanelli, Carmarthenshire, on 5 July last year.
Sophie Evans, 30, had sustained 72 separate injuries on the outside of the body, “all but three of them new injuries”.
Richard Jones, who is now 50, believed he was “being taken advantage of financially” by Ms Evans and his son, with whom she was in a relationship.
While the purpose of Jones’s visit was “purely normal”, he confronted her on that morning about his suspicions and Ms Evans’s reaction was such that Jones “lost [his] temper”.
He subjected Ms Evans to “gross violence” before ultimately strangling her and leaving the property to run errands, including ordering a new bank card and buying pastries from a bakery.
Richard Jones. Pic: Dyfed-Powys Police
‘Last time on their school run’
During sentencing on Monday, the defendant kept his head bowed for most of the hearing.
He will have to serve at least 20 years behind bars before he can be considered for release by the parole board.
Swansea Crown Court heard Ms Evans was the mother of two young children.
Passing his sentence, Judge Geraint Walters said Ms Evans “had just taken her two children for the last time on their school run” prior to the attack.
“She wasn’t to know that when she parted company with them that morning,” he added.
The court heard the Jones believed he was being defrauded by Ms Evans and his son.
“There is clear evidence, that in the days leading up to this, that you had begun harbouring thoughts that Sophie Evans and your own son were in fact financially scamming you,” he said.
“What precisely brought about that view is difficult to determine.”
Judge Walters said Jones “lost [his] temper when [he] didn’t get the answer that [he] thought [he] deserved”.
He added that, having lost his temper, the defendant “subjected [Ms Evans] to gross violence over a period of time, before you ultimately extinguished her life by strangulation”.
The court was told in evidence that at the time of the attack, Ms Evans was wearing only a bath towel.
‘The rock of our family’
In a victim personal statement, Ms Evans’s sister Kerry Quinlan told the court she was “the rock of our family”.
She said Ms Evans was taken from them in a “senseless and cruel act”.
“Words cannot express fully how much of a loss this has been to her children,” she added.
“When they cry themselves to sleep wanting their mum, she isn’t there and never will be.”
Ms Quinlan added that Jones had “taken everything from us, all in the most despicable way possible”.
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Ms Evans’s partner at the time, and the defendant’s son, Jamie Davies, said in a victim personal statement, read on his behalf, that they had both “trusted” Jones, and that Ms Evans had even been planning the defendant’s 50th birthday.
“The thought of having to live my life without Sophie causes me extreme pain and heartache,” he added.
Prosecuting, Michael Jones KC said the offence was aggravated by the defendant’s previous convictions and the fact Ms Evans was murdered in her home.
In mitigation, David Elias KC said there was a “lack of premeditation”.
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