A South Tyneside food bank has said that summer holidays are off the table for many struggling North East families due to the cost of living crisis.
Hebburn Helps appeared during a segment on ITV ’s Good Morning Britain, in which presenter Katy Rickitt explained that many families with children will be “dreading” the upcoming summer holidays due to financial struggles. The charity has already seen demand surge by 37% since Covid began, and are expecting even more people to turn to them throughout the holidays.
Asked how worried she was about the surge in demand for food banks in recent months, Hebburn Helps co-founder Angie Comerford said: “It’s a massive concern - it has been a slow and steady rise for the last couple of years. The stories that we’re hearing of people coming through the door - people are living in despair right about now.
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“As for a holiday, a summer holiday, there isn’t going to be any of that happening - not for some of the families that we deal with. Definitely, definitely not,” she added.
“It’s putting extra fuel in the car, it’s putting extra meals in the kids’ tummies - it’s just going to be too much for a lot of people right now.”
Asked if she thought that cost of living payments put forward by the Government would fall short of covering any summer holiday expenses, Angie replied: “Almost definitely. Maybe if you’ve just got one child, but a lot of the service users that we’ve got, they’ve got more than one child.
“Two, three, four kids - to put the extra meal on the table and to take them on a day out, it’s a lot of money. There’s nowhere cheap to go anymore, unless you go to the local park or somewhere like that.
“This is where we come in, because we provide the packed lunches and the games on the field out the back over the next six weeks,” Angie explained of the activities Hebburn Helps is putting on during the summer holidays, to help provide a meal and some entertainment for struggling families.
Hebburn Helps in Mountbatten Shopping Centre in Hebburn is run by volunteers who aim to help those in the local community who are in need. You can get in touch with the charity via their website .
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