Wiltshire appeal to support cost of living crisis reaches £100K
The Wiltshire Community Foundation is still taking donations
A charity appeal in Wiltshire to support people struggling with the rising cost of living has now raised £100,000.
Wiltshire Community Foundation's (WCF) campaign will give out grants to local charities and organisations working with people facing hardship.
Opposition parties have criticised the announcement though, saying they wanted to see more practical solutions offered up.
Beth Maughan from WCF says people are making heartbreaking changes to save cash:
"A lunch club in Salisbury, which provides lunch and companionship for older people, recently had to put their prices up by just a pound, to cover their rising fuel costs. A few of the people there have said that they can't afford to have the meal anymore, they'll bring their own sandwiches. They're really worried that this might have been the only hot meal they were getting a week.
"(A carer's charity has told us) people are really finding it hard to pay their fuel bills and so when the kids get home from school on cold days, they're going straight up to their bedrooms and getting in their beds, because they're so worried about the rising costs."
Services like foodbanks, debt counsellors, family support groups and mental health groups across Wiltshire could receive funding from the Poverty Hurts Appeal.
Many organisations have already approached WCF to tell them more families and individuals are coming to them for help and they're expecting numbers to rise significantly in the coming months.
WCF's Beth Maughan says financial hardship is a big issue in Wiltshire:
"40% of children in Wiltshire live in poverty; a quarter of neighbourhoods in Wiltshire have elderly people living in poverty; and even before the energy price cap rose in April, there were 30,000 people across Wiltshire already struggling to pay their energy bills."
There's still time to donate to the Poverty Hurts Appeal, via the Wiltshire Community Foundation's Local Giving page.