Poverty Hurts: Festive cheer in Wotton during the cost-of-living crisis

Poverty Hurts: Festive cheer in Wotton during the cost-of-living crisis

The Keepers, a community hub in Wotton, received a grant of £1,500 towards their Christmas provision for families and individuals struggling with the cost-of-living crisis.

The Keepers mission is to support communities in the area to be resilient, connected and supported. Their hub works to ensure that everyone feels they can both get support from the hub, and that their input back into it is invaluable. They ask people to “Come as you are, bring what you can and take what you need.”

Last Christmas they worked hard to make sure that those who used the hub were neither left lonely over Christmas or left struggling to meet the costs of the festive season. They said:

“Many of our visitors have a range of needs including loneliness, mental health issues and poverty. All of these issues are magnified at Christmas. Our older visitors are often now living on their own as they have been widowed, or sometimes they have mobility issues and can’t get out of the house regularly. Others may have Dementia, and celebrating the traditions of Christmas is a really good way of accessing long term, happy memories. Younger families who are struggling with poverty find the increased costs of Christmas – providing presents for family, keeping the heating on, and providing special food really difficult to afford.”

The Keepers came up with plans for Christmas that would tackle both these issues. They provided food bags with donated gifts (such as toiletries and chocolates) to 61 households with 121 adults and 70 children benefitting, taking the pressure off family budgets that were stretched even further by the Christmas season. They also held special Christmas Cafes, serving soup and festive bakes during the Christmas season, and ensured that they were also able to offer emergency advice to anyone struggling with housing or financial issues over the Christmas period. On Christmas Day they served dinner for 35 people, including offering transport to get people to the hub.

July 2024

Community support

The Christmas provision was hugely appreciated by all who benefitted, but it also had life-changing consequences for one of their regular visitors. A Dad, who had needed to give up full-time work to help look after his child with additional needs, was a regular visitor and attended the Christmas provision. In conversation with him, they found out that he was looking for part-time work that fitted around his childcare commitments. The Keepers were able to offer him a part-time cleaning role at the hub that fitted alongside his benefits payments. He has been able to use this experience as a catalyst to look at further cleaning roles.