Care Packages Provided – Week 1

Care Packages Provided – Week 1

Spennymoor Town Council has identified over £3000 worth of funding to be spent on creating care packages for the vulnerable in the Town during the lockdown created by the Coronavirus.

To carry out an initial project, we contacted the Solan Connor Fawcett Family Cancer Trust, and asked them to identify the clients they were supporting in the area.  We are also working with Natalie Pearson and the group she has pulled together – Helping Spennymoor, who are providing volunteers to assist with the care package projects.  With the agreement and assistance of Cllr Ian Geldard, Town Council staff were able to attend the Morrisons Store where he is the Service Manager, to carry out a large shop – without restriction – to pull the packages together.    This was vitally important as we needed to purchase some 60 of each item, in order to cater for the Solan Warriors., although this was not always possible.  For instance tinned vegetables were in very thin supply.  Each package contained toilet rolls (yes we did manage to get some), soap, bread, milk, eggs and an assorted of tinned and packaged goods including pasta, sauces, beans, tea, coffee etc and 3 carrier bags of items were supplied to each household on 24^th March.

Cllr Elizabeth Wood, Town Mayor, said I would like to thank everyone involved personally and on behalf of the Town Council – the Town Council staff, Natalie Pearson and the resident volunteers she has co-ordinated, Cllrs Mr and Mrs Machin for their liaison with Mark Solan and assistance on the day, Cllr Ian Geldard for allowing access to Morrisons and Morrisons the company.

A further project will be undertaken next week, in conjunction with Spennymoor Police and Asda, and we are also currently trying to obtain funding from other sources in order to extend the project past next week.  We will be working with a variety of agencies to access details of those individuals and families who are deemed to be vulnerable to try and ensure there is a spread of people supported.

I would also like to thank Wetherspoons as they alerted Cllr Gemma Abley to the fact that they were closing at 12 noon today and had some stock available which would only be ‘binned’ if not taken away.  These items were collected and will be used in next weeks project.