Local families receive Christmas food and winter coats from Millfield

Students, staff and members of the Millfield community have donated over 50 Christmas food hampers to vulnerable local families in the Street area. The joint initiative with Millfield’s food supplier Chartwells is aimed at ensuring everyone has a special meal on Christmas day.

Children at local schools in the Mendip area have also received over 50 coats this winter. The coats were donated by Millfield families and staff, which have been laundered and prepared by the Laundry Department at the school.

Millfield has been working closely with the Street Parish Council and the Mendip District Council to help support local children and families during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Christmas hampers include fresh and pre-packaged ingredients, including a turkey crown, festive vegetables, chocolates, Christmas puddings and crackers to pull at the table, as well as a few surprises and even treats for family pets. Staff from Millfield will also be delivering the hampers in the run up to Christmas day.

The school was awarded a certificate of appreciation from Lions Clubs International earlier this year for its work to help the local community in Street and Glastonbury through donations and volunteering during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Millfield Headmaster Gavin Horgan says, “After an extraordinary summer, the Millfield community wanted to make sure that local families could enjoy a plentiful Christmas this year. The pandemic has been a shock to us all and has hit some families especially hard, so we are delighted that we can help to bring some Christmas cheer to those who need it. I’m really pleased that we have such strong links with our local community in Somerset and look forward to the ways we can further help each other in the years to come.”

Andy Leafe, Chair of the Street Parish Council and one of the Parent Family Support Advisors working with local infant and junior schools in Street, says, “Even before the pandemic, Millfield has become the nucleus of the community here in Street. It’s hard to describe the profound effect that the school has had on the families that need support in this area, but as someone who works very closely with them, I have seen the positive impact first-hand. I’m immensely proud of what Millfield and the collective voluntary organisations in Street have achieved during such a challenging time. Thank you.”

Over the summer holidays, Millfield worked with Street Parish, Mendip District and County Councils in Somerset, as well as independent food supplier Chartwells, to help ensure over 1,000 Somerset children from five local schools who are eligible for free school meals and their families continued to have access to healthy, fresh food during school closures due to the coronavirus outbreak. Over 8,000 people have received over 40,000 main meals as a result of the initiative. 

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the leading independent school helped to develop several systems for the management and delivery of prescriptions, as well as setting up community support links and donating and distributing food. Over 100 volunteers from the Millfield community delivered over 3,000 prescriptions and undertook 100 shopping trips and deliveries for vulnerable families. The school’s laser cutters were used to make hundreds of masks for council workers, and members of the community sewed vital PPE for keyworkers. Millfield students also raised a total of £10,000 for UK charities including the Somerset NHS Foundation, MIND UK, CALM and St Margaret's Hospice, as well as setting up their own support networks with local Somerset care homes, sending messages from 10 different countries to residents in Bridgwater, Keinton Mandeville, Glastonbury and Butleigh.