Rainbow Centre to hand out Christmas presents to over 600 kids
The Rainbow Centre says there has been an increase in demand for help from people who are vulnerable, homeless, or in crisis in Scarborough.
A charity is set to hand out Christmas presents to more than 600 children in Scarborough.
The Rainbow Centre says there has been an increase in demand for help from people who are vulnerable, homeless, or in crisis.
Manager, Trish Kinsella, said:
"We're seeing a lot more people who are very distressed, very upset, very concerned about what's going to happen in the future. It's had a big effect on people's mental health and we see a lot of people who are not coping.
"Fuel poverty is huge and a lot of it is to do with children. The fear that they're going to go back in lockdown and they haven't got enough to get them through the last lockdown, so what are they going to do this lockdown? I think everybody is expecting there to be a lockdown after Christmas and they're so frightened of that.
"We don't do this by ourselves. During the pandemic, especially the early stages and now at Christmas, the community support has been huge. It's been amazing and it's enabled us to do probably 1,100 food parcels that we're giving out this Christmas.
"Some are families, some are singles, some are couples. It's over 2,000 people, adults and children, who are receiving help this Christmas but we can't do it because we haven't got the resources to do it. It's people's generosity that have enabled us to pack the food, buy the food and the donations of food are huge. We're going shopping at 6 o'clock in the morning because we're running out all the time.
"We're doing Father Christmas for over 600 children this year. They all get 5-8 presents depending on the size and age of presents but we try and keep it the same and they're all new presents. We usually do about 300-400 kids, but never this many. Some years it may be 250-300 but it's never been 600 plus. It's going up with more people phoning up."
"We just want to bring some light into this horrible, dark time. Just to make it nice because it might be the only presents they'll get. A lot of them have said they wouldn't know what they'd do without the presents. We just want to bless people this year, it's just been horrible and we want them to get something out of Christmas just so they can remember that."