00:00As a result of the action, children are going to bed hungry and that needs to be stopped.
00:06Canterbury Food Bank says emergency passes for children have increased by 30% in the last month,
00:12following Kent County Council scrapping its school holiday food voucher scheme.
00:16This comes at a time when the charity says the cost of living is putting pressure on both of those
00:21needing support and those able to donate food.
00:24The food bank distributed enough food to make around 5,000 meals for children in June this year.
00:30One month after KCC stopped their scheme, the charity saw an increase in over 1,000 emergency meals compared to
00:37the same time period last year.
00:39So it's a direct correlation. It's an action which has a consequence.
00:44There is only one reason why our emergency child parcels will have jumped so high, so quickly, and that's because
00:52food vouchers have been scrapped.
00:54All this stock from the charity does get donated primarily through these donation points found in supermarkets.
01:00But a lot of the donation and the stock do also come from charity pockets themselves over concerns that there
01:05may not be enough food or resources if they relied solely on donations.
01:09Until this summer, families with children received free school meals were given £10 a week during the holidays to help
01:16buy food.
01:16The vouchers funded through the household support fund have now been scrapped as KCC says funding has changed.
01:23And the charity is concerned that the responsibility of filling that gap has been put on food banks.
01:29It's difficult for us. People, voters, rely on governments, local and central, to look after the people who are most
01:38vulnerable.
01:39It shouldn't be the case that those organisations, those authorities, those governments hand over the responsibility to food banks.
01:46Volunteers here now make around 70 deliveries a day, taking emergency food to families who cannot afford the basics.
01:53So some deliveries for a family might be multiple bags. Yesterday we had a bag, we had 10 bags for
01:59one family.
02:00Some people have just two bags because it's a single person.
02:04The food bank fears that without extra support, even more parents will turn to charity to feed their children.
02:10Kent County Council did not provide me with a comment, but did say to a charity,
02:14the move away from broadly distributed vouchers reflects both the funding constraints and a shift towards more targeted interventions.
02:22We are aware this may create uncertainty, particularly for families who've come to rely on a predictable level of support
02:28using school holidays.
02:30With the summer holidays now underway, the food bank fears more children could be left facing hunger,
02:35as families struggle to fill the gap left by the loss of holiday food support.
02:40Nayla Mohamed for KMTV in Canterbury.
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