GUESTS at Swindon Night Shelter will be offered the opportunity to take part in activity sessions to support them with life skills. The invitation-only classes, which include skills such as cooking, gardening, painting and decorating, are designed to help those who have found themselves living chaotic lives or who are vulnerably housed. Manager Ian McCarthy said: “We’re hoping to build up these activity sessions weekly over time to help our guests to get into a routine along with the opportunity to learn and develop new skills. We’ve realised that as we start to come out of the pandemic that there is a need to give our guests opportunities to engage with everyday skills which they may have either lost touch with or have been unable to engage in due to their housing circumstances.”
SWINDON Children’s Scrapstore is continuing to get food on the tables of struggling families and individuals to stop them “slipping through the cracks”. Chiseldon Parish Council and the Scrapstore have been working together to feed people in the village since the start of the pandemic. The Scrapstore says it has made over 1,000 food boxes since the start of the pandemic for Chiseldon, schools, and other organisations. The manager of the Scrapstore, Olivia McCann, told the Adver: It makes me feel good that I can help in this way. It s not easy hearing some of the situations people have ended up in because of the pandemic.
MORE families in the town are struggling to put food on the table during the pandemic. The impact of three lockdowns has hit Swindonians hard, with the Office for National Statistics revealing the number of people claiming unemployment benefits in December was double that seen in March.
Swindon Night Shelter is one of the organisations trying to fill the gap – and say it is those who find themselves out of work for the first time that are facing the biggest struggle, particularly with half-term on the horizon. “At the moment there is a real issue around food insecurity,” said Dawn Prosser, catering manager with the Night Shelter.