Plea for school uniform donations as Telford demand for service more than doubles
A Telford charity has issued a plea for school uniform donations as it braces itself for 'the floodgates to open' in the coming weeks.
Telford Crisis Support has seen demand for donated uniform and PE kit double over the last year.
Its School Uniform Project is open all year round but with the summer holidays now here, staff at the centre expect demand to surge again – and desperately need donations to keep apace.
Operations manager Simon Lellow said: "School uniforms are a huge expense as we know. We are getting lots of demand for the service now and keeping up with that, through donations, is always the difficult challenge.
"As the school holidays arrive, it becomes the forefront of people's thinking again. We do run the service all year because children do wear uniform out or have growth spurts, but it does tend to accumulate at this time and become the most busy period so we are keen to get the message out.
"This project can make a big difference to families, especially if it helps to save them a little money over the school holidays and gives parents the chance to do some things a bit different with the kids.
"People are under pressure, as we know, and anything we can do to help ease that is important.
"Last year, in four weeks in August, we did about 500 referrals and this year we are already up to 1,200 referrals. One day, this week, we had 69 in a day.
"This time of year is certainly the peak of it and we expect the floodgates to open a little bit so we are expecting a large take up so it's about getting as much uniform on the shelves as possible to accommodate everybody.
"We try to give people as much as we can but we are beholden to what comes in so it's a balancing act really."
Any school uniform from the borough, including cardigans, blazers, white shirts, polo jumpers, trousers, skirts and PE kit is needed but branded school items are also useful.
Simon added: "It's great for the environment too if people can donate clothes because so much ends up in landfill unnecessarily that it takes that element into account as well.
"Not everyone has time to swap or recycle so our scheme pulls all the pieces together and does it that way."
Donations can be taken directly to them to the Fruit of the Loom building on Halesfield 10, Telford. To find out more about other drop-off points, visit telfordcrisissupport.org.uk