There’s a Barbie sat among other dolls. A dancing monkey. Soft cuddly toys. In a food bank in Paddington, London, volunteer Jane is counting through the donated presents to hand out to children next week. Or, as she puts it to me, for “any who need one”.

For families who don’t have the money for bags of pasta or a tin of meat, Christmas means not only hunger but more costs they can’t afford. “I ask people who come in what they’re doing for Christmas and they look at me like, ‘I’m in a food bank. What can I do for Christmas?’” Jane says.

Look around the food bank’s neighbouring streets and you find yourself in the middle of two-tier Britain: in Jane’s words, a “posh” part of the capital that also runs emergency food parcels out of the local community centre. This month has seen the biggest surge in use in the food bank’s three-year history: last week about 100 people came through the doors in a couple of hours. Kensington and Chelsea – where there are streets where the average property can set a buyer back £8m – is about to shut its food bank. Its users are already coming to Paddington, Jane says.

Jane, 52, started helping at the food bank a year ago, after she was made redundant. She’s familiar with illness – she was a health journalist – but is struck by seeing people hungry. “Not a little bit peckish because they skipped breakfast or haven’t had lunch. But hungry because they haven’t eaten for around three or four days,” she says. “Literally nothing.”

As wages shrink, rents rise and benefits are cut, Jane sees the citizens who could be described as collateral damage: a stroke victim left with large lapses in memory sanctioned by the jobcentre for forgetting an appointment; a care worker earning barely a tenner a day because her travel costs come out of her pocket; a PhD student who lost his house and now lives in a Tesco car park. It’s the dark shadows under people’s eyes that stand out for Jane. Frequently they’re stick-thin; disoriented. Very often they’re on the verge of tears. “They feel they have to apologise for being here,” she says. “We had one pensioner shaking with embarrassment.”

Jane is now used to “coaxing” people in as they hover in the doorway. The first thing she does is offer a cup of tea and a biscuit. Nine times out of 10 people ask for theirs with three or four sugars, she says. For nerves. Or energy. “A phrase I hear over and over again as people pick up a food parcel is, ‘The system’s washed its hands of me.’”

Food banks are now used to plugging the gap – Paddington even has a weekly volunteer from the Citizens Advice to help with benefit delays or evictions – but as deprivation sets in, the bank acts as reassurance that someone cares. Local support services in the area have closed down. The food bank, Jane says, is one of the few places some people can go to even be listened to.

For the Christmas period, on top of the toys for young families, every food parcel given out will include something extra: a packet of mince pies, a Christmas pudding, chocolates or a box of biscuits. It’s a little bit of normality – a secondhand doll or football for your children or a Quality Street to offer a friend when they drop by – at a time when it’s especially needed. More and more people coming in for food parcels this winter have had their electricity cut off and can’t afford to get it put on again. There’s been an increase in people talking about ending their own lives. “It’s happening every week now,” she says.

What really gets her, Jane admits, is that in her affluent area, so many who need a food parcel are severely ill or disabled. “We have a blind man who comes in, and someone who’s deaf,” she says. They’ve now started to deliver to housebound people with disabilities who can’t get out to get a food parcel. Jane sees it is like this: the food bank is a microcosm of what’s wrong with the country, but just as much, what is good about people.

Three days before Christmas Day, she and other volunteers will use their spare time to put on a Christmas dinner at the food bank. The meal is made up of donated food, and is for anyone who’s used the service this year. So far, 80 people have signed up. “Most ask, ‘Can I bring my kids too?’”

• You can donate to North Paddington food bank here