Weaning Packs for Families In Need

We love this story from Noni about how Kingston Vineyard have been caring for the littlest in their community through lockdown, including working with Joe Wicks!

“At Kingston Vineyard during lockdown we became the distribution point for formula, baby food and nappies for Kingston and Richmond Boroughs. During this time we identified a significant number of families applying for baby food for children who should already be weaned. At a possible cost of up to £7 a day this seemed extremely expensive. Many parents also requested baby food for little ones, where they could be using their own food to feed their children and significantly saving money.

In light of this, we got to work with local health visitors in the first two weeks of lockdown to create ‘weaning packs’ for families in these circumstances. These packs included a blender and other necessary times, and we sent them to 15 families with children between 5 1/2 – 9 months.

We asked for feedback from these families and it was overwhelmingly positive. This prompted us to ask a “What If” question, and so we set out to get funding, which we received from City Bridge Trust and the National Lottery. This meant we could purchase even more blenders! We spoke to Tommee Tippee who agreed to give us a trade price on the blenders. We also chatted with Joe Wicks’ team (Joe lives locally) and they agreed to send us 60 of his weaning books. We had information leaflets printed professionally and then spoke with Public Health and agreed that we would launch the project across both Boroughs. We created a brief referral form and wrote to all the team to invite them to now refer any baby within the age bracket for one of these weaning packs.