Community/Family support @ Spilsby Christian Fellowship (SCF)
Spilsby, UK
SCF is located within rural Lincolnshire, 12miles from Skegness. We provide services for local families including Parent & Toddler & Youth Groups, Messy church, Family fun days and Community support via Food bank and School Uniform Bank. Whilst these face to face group were on-hold during lockdown, they are now opening up again. Our twice weekly parent/baby/toddler groups encourage parents/carers to get to know others, build friendships and encourage peer support, helping to promote parents mental health and well-being. Our parent training courses aim to provide personal, emotional and practical support for local individuals. This help may be in encouraging single parents to get out and about through our Gingerbread group, spending time chatting and signposting parents of children with additional needs to further help and guidance, by spending time working alongside parents and their children within our toddler groups, or by providing a variety of activities which will stimulate and engage local youngsters including cooking, team building, first aid, self-defence. it is our aim that not only will activities engage the youngsters and help keep them off the streets, but will give them skills for life. Our monthly "Messy Church" sessions, encourage families to learn about the bible through crafts and activities, a key part of this session is the provision of a "healthy meal" for all participants. When our School Uniform Bank was introduced, we couldn't have envisaged the "real" need and today we serve and work with twelve local primary and secondary schools - who signpost parents to us, we regularly provide items to many families a week - from a missing PE shirt, to a full set of uniform. Living in a rural area, we find a number of families do not have the support of extended families, and struggle to access the facilities often provided in the larger towns. Bearing this in mind we also provide seasonal family fun days, opportunities for families to spend time together, take part in crafts/games, share refreshment and to go away with something. The bus service locally is infrequent and the cost prohibitive - the lack of personal transport means many have to rely on smaller local stores for their weekly food shopping and find costs higher. During lockdown we provided ,cooking, baking and meal packs. During most of our groups food is an important element, encouraging families to talk and eat together, whilst also enabling parents to provide access to "healthy food" for their children, whilst not having to "ask for help". Since the introduction of Universal Credits, we have seen a rise in families using our food and school uniform bank, and supplies are being used at a quicker rate, Having the support of organisations through "neighbourly" will allow us to maintain supplies in our food bank, continue to cook with young people and meet the needs of local families whilst helping to reduce some of the financial burden.
What we've received