Food larder says families will struggle with food costs during the school holidays
Towcester Community Larder are providing food bags and also vouchers to families in need.
A Northamptonshire Food Larder says families will struggle with food costs over summer.
Schools break up next week, and Towcester Community Larder are providing food bags and also vouchers to families in need.
Katie Steele is Operations manager at the Larder:
"Obviously they don't get the school meals, so then they (parents an carers) have to provide more food for the children over the school holidays and that's when we find a lot of families struggle.
"We also find obviously it's expensive to do activities for children and and, you know, make their entertaining holiday kind of thing. So that's when most families really need the extra support. So we we try to do as much as we can and and help with that."
The Larder have already helped 91 families from 13 primary and secondary schools ahead of the summer break next week. They've been given food bags and vouchers for the Larder.
It's hoped these vouchers will help whilst another supermarket voucher scheme is paused according to Katie:
"One bag of food obviously wouldn't stretch very much. So we want to be able to provide a sustainable provision throughout the whole school holidays and we like people to come to us.
"We want to avoid landfill and people getting food that they won't like or won't want to give their kids. So we we try and get encouraged to come to us so that we can actually get them the best food that they will use"
Low income families can't currently apply for the one-off supermarket voucher via North Northants Council's website, though they say applications for the Household Support Funding vouchers are due to re-open on Monday 4 August.
Katie says the bags also contain recipe cards and the plan is to run some cooking workshops in the new school year.
From this week the Food Bank - for those in crisis - will also work out of the Food Larder:
"We'll be sharing our premises now from this week. So it just means we can give a real joined up approach for families that need that support. Either on a crisis level and then moving on to us, which is more sustainable long term.
"So it's great to have that joined up link and be able to help people from crisis all the way through to actually be able to have a sustainable food provision and not have to access the food bank on a regular basis."
Katie says they couldn't do what they do without their volunteers. She adds donations towards costs and donations of food are always welcome.
You can find more about the Food Larder on the website.