Salisbury Foodbank supporting more people at start of summer holidays
It's due to the charity being unable to run its usual summer holiday project
A Wiltshire foodbank has told us its seen more families needing its help at the start of the summer holidays.
Salisbury Foodbank says that's down to the charity not being able to run it's usual summer support project.
Manager Maria Stevenson told us the organisation usually hands out up to 200 food parcels to nominated families to get them through the holiday period.
She said: "We didn't have the stocks to provide that project as we had in previously years, so around half term time may we made the decision not to go ahead with that holiday box project.
"It's a huge logistical challenge for us and hits our stocks really hard."
In place of the project, Maria visited around 60 schools in the Salisbury area, asking them to nominate families or raise vouchers for the families as they normally would.
She said that has worked "really well" in several cases.
While the decision to not go ahead with the pre-packed holiday box project has preserved stock in the Ashfield Road Trading Estate warehouse, Maria says they're still in need of items.
Greatest Hits Radio visited the warehouse and Maria told us that they're short on vegetables, meat products, long-life milk and fruit juice and completely out of biscuits.
The charity also needs to boost its stock of toiletry items, including men's and women's deodorants.
Maria told us that the city of Salisbury has many food-related projects running to support people, as well as the Council-led FUEL scheme (Food, Unity, Energy, Laughter), which provides meals and activities for children receiving free school meals.
But Maria said it's families who don't qualify for that support that they're seeing.
"There is so much help there for the lowest of income or families that are on pupil premium, there's not so much support and help for the families in between the high earners and the low earners.
"They're the ones that fall through the gap and have to resort to our help. They're the ones that are paying for childcare so that they're able to continue working."