Councillors agree half term holiday cash boost to ensure borough’s most vulnerable children don’t go hungry

1 post
Community Editor
Posts: 3862
Joined: Sep 2018
Options:
Share this post on:

Councillors agree half term holiday cash boost to ensure borough’s most vulnerable children don’t go hungry

Postby Community Editor » Fri Oct 23, 2020 4:26 pm

logo.png
logo.png (12.56 KiB) Viewed 184 times

Councillors have agreed a Covid-19 half term food support package for vulnerable children from some the borough’s lowest income families to ensure their children don’t go hungry over the schools’ break.

Councillors have approved a £10,000 food voucher scheme to help hard-pressed and vulnerable families in the borough cover the cost of meals during the school holiday.

This latest support mirrors a scheme launched by the council in May which provided 20,000 supermarket food vouchers to ensure children eligible for free school meals didn’t go hungry during the lockdown.

Back in May Wandsworth was the first local authority in the country to get its scheme up and running. Within two days of liaising with its online voucher partner, the scheme was operational and fully compliant with data protection laws.

The latest scheme will work in the same way. Parents whose children have a social worker or are receiving support from the borough’s children’s services department will be eligible for assistance. After they have contacted council staff and been approved for support they will receive a voucher which can be redeemed in their supermarket of choice for food and not for other items.

The council’s schools and education spokesman Cllr Will Sweet said: “This new voucher scheme builds on the success of our previous scheme earlier this year and will deliver food for vulnerable children who might otherwise run the risk of missing out on all the nutrition they need.”

And the council’s cabinet member for finance Rory O’Broin added: “We have happily set aside the funding that’s needed to ensure children from some of our poorest families don’t go hungry this half term.”
Post Reply

Start a conversation
To create a new post and start a new conversation, please click on the button.