Home Start East Antrim have opened a Baby Bank service at Greenland Community Centre in Larne.
The service, which officially launched on Wednesday, March 20, was set up to support families facing financial hardship or crisis.
The service, which officially launched on Wednesday, March 20, was set up to support families facing financial hardship or crisis.
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00:00 I'm here this morning at Greenland Community Centre to launch the Home Start first baby bank in
00:06 Lahore. Absolutely fantastic and whilst it gets all the organisation support it wouldn't happen
00:12 without all the volunteers and it's absolutely fantastic that it's here and I'm so proud of
00:17 everybody involved and it will be a roaring success and much much needed in today's cost
00:22 of living crisis. So well done everybody, so proud of you all. So Eileen can you tell me a wee bit
00:28 about the baby bank service and what it provides for local families? Yeah we launched a baby bank
00:35 today and that's the formal launch but we have been running since December and what we do is we
00:40 provide essentials and clothes and essential items for children up to three. Now we start it up to
00:49 three because we kind of decided that we would need to walk the floor before we can run and we
00:54 wanted to start something manageable and as you can see from here like we have up to three here
00:59 and we're like really bummed out really with items. Okay Gillian can you tell me how people
01:10 would seek a referral to the baby bank? Well there are several ways you can get a referral. You can
01:16 go onto the Home Security Centre website, there's a link to the baby bank and there's an online form
01:23 there so there are, you can phone the office and speak to somebody in the office in Carrick, Fergus
01:29 or we both have mobile numbers that you can phone and we can talk you through actually putting the
01:35 information into the online form. It's dead simple and it's two minutes, it doesn't take long
01:44 and then it comes through to us so it does and we make up the pack so we do.
01:50 So Gillian do you want to tell me as well just about some of the essential items that would be
01:54 in the packs that the baby bank would make up? So on the board here we have written out in case
02:00 Eddie and I aren't available that somebody else can make up the packs so we would have an essential
02:05 pack that would be toiletries, nappies, so they've got wipes, baby baths, shampoo, cotton buds,
02:12 those sorts of things in it and then there would be a clothing pack that we would make up and it
02:17 would be whatever age the child is that they're requesting for. We make up vests, baby clothes,
02:26 couple of outfits, coats, blankets, bibs, you name it we put it in if we've got it we put it into the
02:33 packs.