Concern North Yorkshire parents are skipping meals this half term

It is so their children don't go hungry during the half term break

Author: Kathy GreenPublished 13th Feb 2024

There’s concern over the number of North Yorkshire parents skipping meals this week - because their kids are at home for half term.

The break means children won’t get a free school meal which is putting extra pressure on household budgets.

Faith Emmanuel is the co ordinator at a foodbank in Selby and has this message: "We can't fix every problem that people are experiencing right not but as a parent myself I know that your children need you to be as healthy and as strong as you can possibly be. So we're here not just to feed children in the community but to feed everybody in that household."

"Through any school holiday period we do often have parents that are possibly coming to us for the first time and are unsure of where to go because it's that extra food and those extra meals that you've got to find that you wouldn't ordinarily find."

Faith says people are already really feeling the squeeze but there could be even more difficult months ahead: "We've now just had the last round of cost of living payments so people will have been receiving some of that support and it'll be hitting their bank accounts round about now however that is the last payment that anyone is going to get from it."

"When this foodbank was first started I believe that people thought there would be only 12 people a month that would use the foodbank, have have roughly between 50 and 60 people a week who are attending and we are only open across three days."

You can find out more about the foodbank here

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