Helping South London kinship families face rising cost of living in the holiday period
In the run-up to Christmas, we wanted to write to you to let you know what the Kinship Hub is doing to support Kinship Carers in these increasingly difficult financial times. The cornerstone of their work has always been helping make healthy food accessible for Kinship families, and so they are constantly looking for ways to increase the ability to offer more practical help – like access to free groceries.
The Kinship Hub continues to run a weekly ‘Kinship Carers Cooking Club’ every Saturday. They meet in person on the first Saturday of the month in SE23, with the rest of the Saturday sessions taking place virtually via Zoom calls. These are an opportunity for carers and children to come together, cook a healthy meal, develop friendships, access peer support, and have fun with other children in similar living situations. To help support this project better, they have recently hired two Saturday delivery drivers which allows them to deliver grocery parcels of the ingredients needed (and often other donated food items) to kinship families in the South London area. They can now confidently reach all Kinship families in Southwark, Lewisham, Lambeth, Wandsworth, Greenwich, and Bromley. If you know of Kinship Families in South London or are a Kinship family yourself that would benefit from becoming a member of our cooking club please use their online form at: https://www.kinshipcarershub.org/contact
In light of the nationwide increase in the cost of living, Kinship Hub continues to build partnerships with other London organisations such as ‘Getir’. These relationships help to increase their access to donated food items, which they give to Kinship families as a way to reduce their weekly food bills and still be able to have access to healthy, nutritious foods.
Further still, they are also now taking referrals for one-off delivery of Christmas Hampers. If you know of a kinship family that would like a Christmas Hamper delivered to them on 24 December, please email them at [email protected] with their name, address, phone number, numbers, and ages of resident children.
Their referral criteria continues to include all Kinship families, regardless of whether there is a legal order in place or not. Basically, if a child is living with someone other than their biological parent(s), adopter, or foster carer; they are eligible for our support services. Feel free to contact them at [email protected] or phone 0779 2320549 if you would like to receive any further information.