Free school meals and holiday clubs

Free school meals

Your child may qualify for free school meals if they're in full-time education and you receive a certain benefit.

Holiday activities and food clubs

Children who receive free school meals as you/they receive a qualifying benefit are entitled to a free place at our Healthy Holidays clubs.

Our holiday activity and food clubs are about supporting families who might need extra help. It gives them access to food and activities to keep their children healthy through the school holidays. The clubs run for a minimum of four hours per day. Every club provides each child with a delicious and nutritious meal.

Vouchers for food

Heathy Start vouchers if you're pregnant or have a child under four

If you’re pregnant or have at least one child under four you could be entitled to a Healthy Start card. It will help you buy food, fresh milk and infant formula milk at your local shops. Each week, you could receive:

• £4.25 during your pregnancy (from the 10th week of your pregnancy)
• £8.50 for children from birth to one year old
• £4.25 for children between one and four years old

You can use the card up until your child's fourth birthday, or until you no longer receive an eligible benefit. If you're under 18 and more than 10 weeks pregnant, you're eligible for the Healthy Start scheme until your baby is born.

Women and children using the Healthy Start scheme to purchase food are also eligible for free Healthy Start vitamins. Healthy Start vitamins are designed for pregnant and breastfeeding women and growing children. Your midwife, health visitor and local family centre will be able to tell you where you can get vitamins in your area.

Sainsbury’s £2 top up voucher

Sainsbury’s is reintroducing it's £2 top up coupons to accompany the government-funded NHS Healthy Start scheme. It will happen every week over the next six months in England, starting 12 October 2022 until 11 April 2023.

Vouchers for fruit and vegetables

The Rose Vouchers scheme helps families on low incomes to buy fresh fruit and vegetables. It supports them to give their children the healthiest possible start.

A family can receive £3 of Rose Vouchers for each child, every week, or £6 if the child is under one year old. Vouchers are available from your local family centre.

Help with buying food

Community Shop

Community Shop provides its members with vital access to deeply discounted food and life-changing learning and development programmes. They also have a Community Kitchen serving low-cost healthy meals, with kids eating free every day!

With stores in Athersley and Goldthorpe, members save an average of £212 each month on their shopping bills. The stores offer a wide range of food and household products. one offer is a ‘Plenty for 20p’ range which includes fresh fruit and vegetables and other essential items.

Membership is FREE and open to people who:

• live locally
• receive a means-tested benefit, for example: Jobseeker's Allowance (JSA), Employment and Support Allowance (ESA), housing benefit or council tax support)

Storehouse and Field

Storehouse and Field is a community food hub in Shafton that provide access to high quality food and ingredients. They aim to help people who are not able to regularly eat a healthy, nutritious diet.

Members pay a £26 per month fee (£6 per week) and for this they get:

• a weekly shopping basket full of food, which they pick themselves from a fantastic range of fresh, frozen and ambient stock
• access to the hub cafe
• access to recipes and other resources
• advice and support with additional services
• food and cooking events

OLIO

OLIO connects neighbours with each other and with local businesses so surplus food can be shared for free, not thrown away. This could be food nearing its sell-by date in local stores, spare home-grown vegetables, bread from your baker, or the groceries in your fridge when you go away. For your convenience, OLIO can also be used for non-food household items.

OLIO is free to use and you can use their mobile app for free too!

Too Good To Go

At Too Good To Go, they’re determined to help fix the problem of food waste. Their anti-food waste app lets you rescue delicious, unsold food from businesses to save it from going to waste. In turn, saving you money on perfectly good food. Find out more about Too Good To Go.

Crisis food support

Barnsley Foodbank

Barnsley Foodbank can provide healthy emergency food and support to local people in crisis who are referred to them.