Supporting Families Through Our Back to School Ready Campaign
This summer, as part of our Back to School Ready Campaign, we’ve been reaching out to communities across Shropshire, hosting school uniform pop-up events.
These events are a vital extension of our ongoing Cool for School program, which typically operates on a referral basis. However, these pop-ups offer an additional, direct way for families in need to access essential school uniforms at no cost.
We’ve visited several key locations, including Ditherington Community Centre, Shrewsbury Foodbank, The Zone in Market Drayton, and Severnfields Medical Practice, which has a large catchment area covering Sundorne, Harlescott and The Grange.
Across all events, we have helped 78 children access school uniform items to help them prepare for the new term.
With the average cost of a full school uniform reaching up to £130 for primary school children and as much as £290 for secondary school students in Shropshire, these free items like trousers, dresses, PE kits, skirts, and shirts offer significant financial relief to many families. Most families we assisted had more than one child and shared how challenging it was to afford everything needed for the new school year.
We are incredibly thankful to everyone who has donated uniforms, to help with our campaign and ensure we have the stocks to enable us to run events like these alongside our usual referral-based service which has helped an additional 57 children.
To keep up with the demand, we’ve launched an ongoing GoFundMe campaign to help purchase specific items and sizes we might be short of. If you would like to make a donation to our crowdfunding account you can do so on our GoFundMe page.
Our thoughts are now turning to the colder weather and we’re starting to collect school coats to give to children through similar pop-up events in the Autumn.
If you have any children’s coats you would like to donate, please drop them off in our donation boxes which can be found at the end of the till points in Tesco Extra Shrewsbury and Ellesmere, and Morrisons Shrewsbury and Oswestry.
Together, we can help ensure every child is ready for the school year ahead, no matter the weather.
