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Life During Lockdown: Foodbags in East Surrey

Staff and volunteers at Welcare in East Surrey have had their hands full recently, with more demand than ever for food and basic supplies for local families.

Prior to lockdown, Welcare offered a foodbag service based from our centre in Redhill.  Families finding themselves in financial difficulty could come to the centre to pick up a foodbag, along with a £10 voucher for the local supermarket (usually Sainsbury’s). The only criteria were that the family needed to live within East Surrey and have a child under the age of 13 (or a pregnancy).

The Covid-19 lockdown created a necessity to do things slightly differently, and offer a wider range of choice to families in need of support. These changes have included:

  • Delivery of foodbags – where the family can’t get out to collect, we now deliver foodbags, and have increased to 2 bags at a time instead of 1.
  • Choice of supermarket vouchers – we now have a range of vouchers for 4 different supermarket on offer, so that families can choose the most appropriate for them.
  • £20 vouchers – we have increased the accompanying vouchers from £10 to £20.
  • Vouchers by post –  to aid social distancing, and to help families who are in need but perhaps cannot easily get out to the shops, we have introduced the option of posted vouchers.

In order to keep the system of making up foodbags going, our existing harvest volunteer, Christina, came into the centre recently to help us keep on top of our stock control – making sure that our stock is well organised and sorted by use-by-date. Another of our existing office volunteers, Olivia, along with her husband Mark, have come along and made up foodbags together. As members of the same household, Olivia and Mark (photographed above) were able to work together in the same room – proving twice as productive!

 

If you need help or support at this time, find out how to get in touch here. For more information on our services specifically in East Surrey, email redhill@welcare.org, or see our Redhill page. 

You can also donate via the button below.

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The Diocesan Association of Friendless Girls was founded in 1894 by the Rt Revd Randall Davidson, Bishop of Rochester and his wife Edith.