Mum praises charity's free half-term craft sessions

In a church hall on the outskirts of a town the atmosphere buzzed as a group of girls glued pom-poms onto plastic dinosaurs, a woman and her grandson played table football and a youth worker prepared lunch.

Thirty-five young people and their families were taking part in one of Whitton Youth Partnership's (WYP) free craft and play holiday sessions in Ipswich.

"It's about targeting children and families who might struggle a little bit during school holidays," said youth worker Andy Fell, who was running the event.

Kirsty, who regularly attends WYP sessions with her 11-year-old daughter Drew, said: "It might be the only time that some of these children can get out during half-term."

"We provide activities and games, but then also making sure that we're well fed and that social time that we have when we have lunch," Fell added.

According to the Trussell Trust, more than 14 million people – including 3.8 million children – faced hunger in the UK last year due to a lack of money.

Kirsty added: "You know it's hard, money is tight and to put on something free like this, where there's games, there's computers, there's crafts... it's really lovely.

"We try and get our names down as soon as we can, and the fact that we can come here and have a lovely meal as well and all sit down - every half-term this is definitely the highlight for us," she said.

"I like how the people here are really nice and all the activities are so creative and the food is really good here too," Drew said.

WYP said the two-hour craft and play session costs about £750 to run.

Fell added: "I think every community has these sort of groups that work away really hard without putting their heads too much above the parapet.

"We've got a fantastic group of trustees who support the charity, we've got an amazing treasurer who finds us the money.

"We're trying to be that place where you can come, have a great time, you can take part in stuff, but also we know the other network of organisations that are in the community.

"So if someone says they're struggling with something we can then do a bit of a warm hand over to another organisation that can help them a bit more than we can."

WYP said it spends £55,000 a year supporting the community in Whitton through a range of services, including initiatives to tackle digital isolation, providing emergency food parcels and running a community cafe in partnership with the parish's Anglican churches.

The Reverend Mary Sokanovic said: "Across the projects we're seeing a great deal of need; partly around loneliness, a lot of digital poverty.

"If you haven't got access to a proper laptop, not just a phone, you can't fill in your forms, you can't keep up.

"So if there's anyone out there who would like to volunteer to run our digital hub project, we've got the kit, I need a volunteer."

According to the Digital Poverty Alliance, 26% of young people do not have access to a laptop or similar device and 53% of people who are offline cannot afford an average monthly broadband bill.

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