Oakfield Community Pantry has opened at the heart of Oakfield Primary School, in Ryde to serve an area of significant disadvantage and poverty within the local community. The pantry aims to provide essential and vital support to help those struggling financially with food and hygiene products. Our Community hub and Pantry is open to the whole community, and members can spend £5 to receive £15 worth of food, however due to the demand and need this often nearly £40 worth of food. We are a Primary School on the Isle of Wight with over 30% of our pupils entitled to free school meals and at least 50% have special education needs. We were continually supporting families with additional costs relating to school uniform, budgeting, school meals, school trips and providing food bank vouchers as well as supermarket vouchers to many vulnerable families who without this would have struggled to feed their families. Therefore we are seeking further funding to improve outcomes for young children and their families and reduce inequalities between families in greatest need and their peers in the following areas; child development and school readiness, parenting aspirations and parenting skills, Child and family health and life chances.

With this in mind we embarked on the journey to open a community pantry to support our local community; aiming firstly to support local families and then to also support elderly people within our community. We currently have 174 members registered at our Community Pantry, many who have shared it is a life line that they are extremely grateful for. We also have many families for whom the local church and school donations support them to afford the weekly £5 to use the pantry.

The Oakfield Community Hub and Pantry should be an integral offer of the community with the core purpose recognised as an ‘early help service’. With a focus on ensuring the local community can thrive, a focus on providing services to families from birth to five and signposting and supporting vulnerable adults within the community is needed. We have recently opened our own Toddler Group ‘Acorn Tots’ which is open to the local community with children under 5, we have a huge number of 24 families registered with us many of those that come weekly for a safe space to meet other mums in the local community and have a hot drink and something eat whilst providing meaningful activities to support the children’s development. We are passionate and determined that unless we work together as a community the impact of children’s centre closures in 2010 will continue to be ever present. That coupled with the cost of living crisis, families are likely to struggle further.