AS many as 200 struggling families are to receive Christmas feasts to stop children going without over the festive period.
Volunteers packed the fresh produce-filled festive parcels yesterday as energy advice service BeGreen supports households across Ayrshire.
Packed with enough food to feed four people for four days, the hampers include turkey crowns, steak pies, gammon joints, vegetables, fruit, sweets and treats.
The bill for meat alone – supplied by Dalry butchers R Stalker & Son – comes in at £55 per pack, taking the total cost into five figures.
The Christmas initiative is the biggest-ever conducted by BeGreen, an arm of renewables company Community Windpower, which operates several wind farms in Ayrshire and beyond.
Coordinator Sandra Scott says the 50% increase is in response to a significant rise in need.
She told The National: “The Garnock Valley is an area of high poverty. There is very high need.
“A lot of it is hidden and a lot of it is happening in working families. They are just scraping by.”
She went on: “The children are my main concern. It horrifies me.
“It really makes me so angry that in an affluent country like Scotland we have children in poverty, and a huge amount of them.”
According to a recent report by the independent Joseph Rowntree Foundation, one in four Scottish children live below the breadline.
The paper said a decline in child poverty seen through the 1990s to early 2000s has been reversed, “mainly due to UK Government-imposed social security cuts”.
In another report, the Trussell Trust food bank network said it had experienced yet another year-on-year increase in demand, with many of those seeking emergency food aid in work.
The organisation says the switch to Universal Credit – which carries a five-week wait for the first payment and has been slammed by the Scottish Government – is amongst the factors driving up demand.
However, the Department for Work and Pensions has disputed this, arguing that it supports households and incentivises work.
After a delayed roll-out, the new benefit package is now in force across the country.
Scott, who operates a food bank service from her Dalry office, says the introduction of the package has been “a disaster” for her local area.
She said: “I can’t wait for the day when I can say I’m closing this food bank, but that won’t be for a long, long while.
“Universal Credit has been a total nightmare.”
Staff from Community Windpower’s offices in England travelled to help put the hampers together at the Church of the Nazarene in Ardrossan yesterday – the only nearby premises large enough to use for the operation.
However, none know who they will be given to, with all referrals coming from social work and other agencies and the identities of beneficiaries protected.
Scott added: “When you use a food bank, you’re not always able to eat fresh foods. There is nothing wrong with eating tinned, because you are still getting a meal, but we want to provide them with what everybody else would expect at Christmas.
“It’s not gold-coated turkeys or anything, something every family should be able to attain at Christmas or any other time for that matter.
“We just want to make sure that the children in these families don’t miss out on a Christmas dinner.”
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