£914k Household Support Fund to help residents

We are the first council in the region to help support children and families who may be experiencing financial hardship, with a government funded household support fund.

An immediate decision has been made to help support families, by providing all children who receive a free school meal within the borough, a £20 supermarket voucher to help with food and fuel costs during the autumn half term holiday.

Families do not need to apply for the voucher. All parents of children who receive a free school meal will each automatically receive a £20 voucher for each eligible child. Darlington schools, in partnership with the council, will be able to order vouchers from Wonde before the half term break. When a school assigns vouchers to a parent, they instantly get a text message and/or email to ask them to choose their supermarket of choice. Asda, Morrisons, Sainsbury’s and Tesco are included in the scheme.

Councillor Jon Clarke, Darlington Borough Council’s cabinet member for children and young people said: “As soon as we received notification that we had been successfully awarded £914k, as part of the national household support fund, to help support families who may be struggling, we knew we had to act immediately to enable us to help those, who need our support, over the upcoming school holiday.”

“We are delighted to be in a position to continue to help families. Every child’s family who is eligible to receive a free school meal will receive a £20 voucher to help towards the costs of food and or fuel during the autumn half term holiday, before they break up from school.”

He added: “We are actively working on plans to identify how we can best help more families who may need our support, and details will be announced in the coming weeks.

For information regarding the national household support fund visit https://www.gov.uk/government/news/government-launches-500m-support-for-vulnerable-households-over-winter