Pam, a SVP Member

Earlier this year Salford Diocese released some figures which said in the Salford Diocese there were 288,885 children living in poverty. Tameside where were situated had 14,355 living in poverty, and this was before the cost of living crisis had any impact, says Pam, President of a Manchester SVP group.

A member of a local SVP group in Greater Manchester, had the idea to ask parents to donate school uniforms from children who’d grown out of them if they were still good quality before we formed our SVP Conference and with this recycling, we’d able to hand these out to families that couldn’t afford to buy new uniforms.

At first, it was difficult to organise but when our SVP formed we thought it was a great idea to get on board with the idea and support so we did. It was coming to the end of the school year and we contacted the two schools in the local parish, and sent out emails to the parents asking if they had any good quality school uniforms that children had grown out of that they’d be happy to donate to the SVP.

We arranged for one of our team to collect all the uniforms and our members spent the summer holidays washing, drying and ironing the uniforms. After we’d sorted through everything, we sent emails out to parents and said if you need any school uniforms for September please contact the SVP and we can supply them. We had lots of families coming forward and we were able to supply them with everything they needed which was great and they were so grateful.

When September came along we thought we’d send another email to the schools to remind them that we can help. This time and to minimise the embarrrassment people may feel in coming forward, the local SVP group said rather than contacting us, just send your child’s name and age and what you need to the school and we’ll send it home in a package to you. This led to a very good response for uniform requests and everyone getting what they needed.

President of the SVP group said, "One of the schools within the parish has had a lot of refugees arriving and needing the children to start school as soon as possible and as they had no money they’d have to be referred to an agency which takes too much time. One of our members, works at the school and because we had the uniforms all washed and ready, she could collect the uniforms straight away for the parents so their children could start school without delay".

The SVP group in Greater Manchester supplied over 100 free uniforms so far. As children are growing all the time we know more requests will come in between now and January when we send out more emails in January. 

"Families are really grateful, and the schools think it’s a brilliant idea. It’s vitally important with rising fuel bills and Christmas coming up, parents are just under so much pressure to find the money and pay their bills. Knowing that they can get these uniforms takes some of the pressure off them".

If you would like to donate a school uniform please contact membership@svp.org.uk with your post code and the school to which the uniform is attributed to.