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A Friday afternoon conversation has kick-started a unique service to improve the lives of families in Boston and North Kesteven.
And the ‘let’s do it’ moment of optimism has been backed by a donation of almost £60,000 from Freemasons’ charity the MCF, which will guarantee support for more than 500 families over three years.
The conversation was amongst Louise Buckingham and her team at Citizens’ Advice in Boston, which now operates the UK’s only combined Citizens Advice centre and Baby Bank. She said: “It was obvious what people coming to us needed, and we wanted to help, but we were worried about how to fund it – but one Friday afternoon we simply said ‘let’s just do it anyway’.”
That leap of faith has led to a service providing clothes, toys, prams and other babycare equipment for families with children up to the age of three – all supplied from a room stacked to the rafters with supplies. There’s even a stock of nappies. As Lousie explained: “Some of the stories we hear are harrowing. We support people who have to limit the number of times their baby is changed because they don’t always have the 75p necessary to buy a pack of Size 1 nappies from Lidl.”
Support and supplies continue to come from other sources. Individuals make donations of outgrown or unused items, the team uses cash donations to buy supplies, and staff at the Tattershall Recycling Centre rescue perfectly good items from going into landfill and pass them on for re-use.
Everything is stored in their office within Boston Borough Council. Louise points to a collection of prams and buggies that look like a shop showroom. “They’re all in perfectly good order, and we’ve checked them and cleaned them. We sometimes get things so new they still have their tags. They’ll all be a godsend to the families who take them,” she said. However, they’re not able to re-use everything. Electrical goods are a ‘no’, as are child car safety seats, as they may have been in an accident or no longer meet safety requirements.
The team also provides collections of toiletries for mums going into hospital to have their babies. “Often they don’t have the basics,” she said, citing the example of a woman escaping domestic abuse. “A donation of £500 would mean we could buy as many as 50 sets.”
The team has also made its own safety video about how to make second-hand items fit for use, and has worked closely with the National Baby Bank Alliance, operating nationwide to develop national partnerships to support baby banks in helping more families.
PGM Dave Wheeler said: “It’s only by talking to people like Louise and her team that you begin to realise the scale of the problem and the work going on to address it. Their commitment just goes to show what can be achieved by a group of people having the courage to say ‘yes if…’ to something that’s never been done before.
“Freemasonry has been pleased to recognise the bravery of that commitment with a substantial donation that, alongside others, will help to sustain a service clearly of enormous value to people in Boston and North Kesteven.”
