City Harvest delivers to school food banks feeding families in need.
As the cost-of-living crisis bites, families with children are amongst those worst affected by food poverty as food and fuel prices soar. Paul Jackson, headteacher at Manorfield Primary School, is no stranger to the current challenges that have surfaces, as the school services a deprived community with needs that go beyond free food.
“The parents have come and been incredibly grateful for the food we’ve been able to provide that has been sent to us from City Harvest, and families have told us that without the food we provide, they would go hungry.
We have always served a deprived community, and during Covid we recognised the need that so many of our families had at that point when income dropped for those families, we recognised the need they had for food.
During that period, we began our relationship with City Harvest who were able to provide us food that we were able to distribute to families. Now, we felt that through Covid, as we came back to relative normality, that things would be OK for those families, but we’ve seen the absolute opposite. We’ve seen the long-lasting effects of Covid, we’ve now seen the cost-of-living crisis, and we’re seeing families who are in desperate need.
We’ve got some examples where parents have come and been incredibly grateful for the food we’ve been able to provide that has been sent to us from City Harvest, and families have told us that without the food we provide, they would go hungry. It’s a real worry- we’ve got 700 children here up from the ages of 2 up to 11 and we don’t want to see a single one of them go hungry and it’s essential that we keep providing food in the way that we do, working with organisations such as City Harvest, to keep the families well, and fit, and healthy through this crisis and hopefully there won’t be the need for it at some point in the future.
Our weekly food pantry means that we can open up conversations with families, we can find out so much more from them about their home situations. We’ve got examples where families have come along to the food pantry, had conversations with us, and we’ve recognised a greater need, been able to signpost them to other services, they’ve had appointments with the Citizen’s Advice Bureau, and solved so many other problems for families.”
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