‘I’m a single mum. Summer school holidays mean a bigger food bill’

There’s “no shame” in visiting a food bank, single mum Kylie says. Still, she used to worry about what people might think.

“I don’t mean this horribly, but I grew up round here, I would not want people to see me standing in a queue outside of a food bank, in case they were judging my kids,” the 40 year-old tells Big Issue. “I’ve got teenagers, they’re of an age that they could get picked on.”

But since the mum-of-five discovered the food bank at Weaver’s Adventure Playground, she doesn’t worry about it anymore.

“Because our kids attend [Adventure], you wouldn’t know I go to the food bank. We go to the cupboard, get our stuff, put it in the bags, put it on the pram. You wouldn’t know. I’ve not got to stand outside and line up and all of that.”

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“My kids don’t realise that I’ve gone into because they just think, Adventure has got extra stuff and they’re giving it to our mums. Not that there’s shame in it, but you just don’t want them worrying, and thinking “Oh, mummy’s got to go to a food bank.”

The cupboard is supplied by Felix, a London-based food redistribution charity which rescues surplus food and distributes it to thousands of community organisations across the UK.

In term time, Felix supplies school food banks; over the holidays, the extra food is delivered to 130 extra organisations.

It’s particularly timely. New research from Felix found that 58% of parents and carers experience more financial pressure during the school holidays, with 17% saying the pressure is significantly greater.

For 76% of parents, some of that extra pressure comes directly from feeding their children: they spend at least £20 more a week on food during the holidays. More than half spend at least £30 more.

The most common increase is between £20 and £29.99 a week, while 22% spend an extra £40 to £49.99. Nearly one in 10 spend £50 or more.

Over six weeks, that could mean finding an extra £300 to keep a family fed.

“School holidays should be a time for families to relax and spend quality time together, but the findings highlight that for many parents they also bring significant financial challenges,” said Rachel May, head of community at Felix.

“When schools close families lose access to breakfast clubs and free school meals and must cover the cost of all these meals, snacks.”

For Kylie, having access to the food bank takes some of that pressure off.

“It’s just that little bit. ‘Oh, we’ve got bread now. I didn’t have to go and buy that’,” she says. “These milk, yogurts, the little takeaway meals that they get. So you literally feel like, ‘alright, we’re alright for a couple of days now. We don’t have to worry about that’. So it just makes your life a lot easier.”

Around 4% of people in the UK lived in a household where a food bank had been used in the previous 12 months in 2024-25, according to Department for Work and Pensions figures. That rises to 8% among children.

The pressure on families remains high, as food prices and utilities surge. In 2025, the Trussell network provided more than 2.6 million emergency food parcels to people facing hunger and hardship.

But stigma around food banks persists. Kylie – whose kids are aged 14, 11, eight, five and three – has been coming to the playground since she was a child herself.

“We know everyone. It’s like how you walk into your family’s house, how you walk in here. Everyone knows each other.”

There is a tuckshop, activities for children and, every Tuesday from 6pm, the food cupboard. To keep it and other food banks stocked, Felix are calling on suppliers to donate more food and help struggling families. Find out more about being a supplier here.

But Weaver’s Adventure Playground is not just about the food, Kylie adds.

Being a single mum is “not easy,” she says. She has also come out of a relationship where she was subjected to domestic violence and says her children experienced trauma. But they don’t feel “judged” at the food bank, she said.

“If they [my kids] didn’t want to talk to me, they’d talk to someone else that was here. You know, like the workers or another parent. So I felt like my kids were being helped in a way.”

“I think this is a very, very good thing for this community, for everyone, for the children, for the single parents, for the parents living together. It is an amazing thing. If Adventure wasn’t here or the food bank, it would affect a lot of people.”

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