Council working with community groups to help holiday hunger

Blackburn with Darwen Council is working with the community and businesses in the borough to tackle half-term hunger.

Councillor Mohammed Khan, Leader of Blackburn with Darwen Council, said:

Blackburn with Darwen Council is working with and supporting local food groups and businesses providing meals to vulnerable children this half term and beyond.

These kind and generous community groups and organisations are making sure no child goes hungry during the school holidays and we give our huge thanks to them.

The Council will work for them in any way we can to help. Sadly, child hunger during school holidays is an issue in the borough as it is across the country.

We applaud the campaign started by footballer Marcus Rashford – it is an amazing thing for a young person in his position to do and it has had a fantastic reaction all over the country.

It is a shame that the Government did not continue its scheme from the summer, when meals were provided to the most vulnerable during the school holidays, but is it amazing to see the whole community come together to help when it is needed most. This is what we do best, and shows we are a united borough which pulls together in times of need.

The Government did provide funds to Councils for local food hubs in June, and Blackburn with Darwen received £239,387 and this was used for the Food Hub part of the Help Hub operation for people shielding, in need and vulnerable during the pandemic.

The Government stipulated that this should be spent within 12 weeks and we did this to help people throughout the summer, and there has been no further funding made available.

I hope we can continue to work with the Government to look at more funding for the children and families who need it most.

We can not allow our children to go hungry, and rest assured we will do whatever we can to make sure this doesn’t happen.

I would like to give my most heartfelt thanks to everyone who has given their help to this so far – not least our Councillors Maureen Bateson and Food Poverty Champion Councillor Jackie Floyd, who have been working tirelessly over the past week to bring all these groups together and make sure every child that needs hep gets it.

I am so grateful, as ever, for the wonderful people we have in this borough and the good we all do when we work together.