Baby bank's urgent appeal as demand for help grows

The founder of a charity which provides essentials like Moses baskets, prams, nappies and clothes to struggling families across Leeds has said it urgently needs more donations to help keep up with demand.

Chantal Nogbou said there had been a "massive increase" in the number of people referred by health and social care professionals to Leeds Baby Bank in recent months.

Nogbou said staff had helped an "unprecedented" 550 families in Leeds since the start of June, and were expecting numbers to rise as winter loomed.

"We get even more people needing help then because they want to put the heating on, but they still need to buy nappies and feed and clothe their child," she said.

Nogbou founded Leeds Baby Bank in 2017 when she was a single parent of four children, including twins, and she realised how many other families were struggling.

The charity will be 10 years old in January and Nogbou said that staff had seen a change in the families who needed their support over time.

"When we started, pre-Covid, maybe one in five children in Leeds lived in relative poverty," she explained.

"Now, you're looking at one in two children in some parts, and that's just a shocking number that really shouldn't be happening."

Nogbou said that about 70% of the children they helped had a parent who was working and she said many were "not managing to manage the bills with energy and fuel prices going up".

According to government statistics, 27% of children in the Yorkshire and Humber region lived in relative low income families - the joint highest proportion, alongside the West Midlands, in the country.

A relative low income family is one living on less than 60% of the median national household income for that year.

Nogbou said the rise in referrals meant more financial challenges for the charity, especially after moving from a city centre office to a larger and more accessible building in Armley which could now provide more services.

"All that has cost money and obviously bills for us have also gone up when it comes to the utilities, so it's definitely a scary thing as a charity," she said.

She added that it was the donations of items and money from the community that had kept the charity going.

"It's the people that, instead of buying a coffee every day, set up a direct debit and send £5 to Leeds Baby Bank every month," she said.

"That £5 can buy something like a brand new mattress for a Moses basket."

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