[Photo credit: Queen of Greens]
Hear from Tracy, a Family Link Worker, at Anfield Children’s Centre in Liverpool. One of our amazing partner organisations distributing Rose Vouchers and supporting families to access fresh fruit and veg.
“There used to be local fruit and veg shops everywhere when I was growing up in Liverpool; they’ve all gone now. I think the Rose Vouchers project is a good idea. Not everyone can get to supermarkets, so having the fruit and veg bus come to the children’s centre really helps.
Most families receiving Rose Vouchers come to a ‘stay and play’ group at the centre, and the bus pulls up as soon as it’s finished. Families can then shop straight away with their vouchers.
When you speak to the parents and say, “How are you finding it?” they tell us they wouldn’t have bought fruit and vegetables before they got the vouchers, but now they’re giving their children veg with each meal. It’s not coming out of their budget, so they can afford to try more variety.
Families at the centre are from a variety of backgrounds. Some are asylum seekers and refugees, and others are families from the local area. When the Rose Vouchers project started at our centre five months ago, most of the families who registered were families we already knew through our groups, like ‘stay and play’ and ‘tiny tasters’, but there were a few parents who came to the centre to ask about Rose Vouchers after hearing about it in the community.
We have more families asking for the vouchers than we can support. It’s difficult as we can only allocate so many vouchers, and not everyone can get them. It’s hard, as you know every family would benefit from the vouchers, but you can’t take away from one to give to another. We currently support 25 families with Rose Vouchers at our centre.”