Agenda item

Question

Councillor Halsall, can we have confidence that the Winter Grant payments will be distributed before Christmas?

Answer

The Covid Winter Grant Scheme provides £208,703 to Wokingham Borough Council to support families and individuals who are struggling to meet the cost of food and energy bills between 1^st December 2020 and 31^st March 2021. 

It is proposed that the grant will be distributed in three ways:

1.     food vouchers to be provided to the families of the 2,166 children and young people in Wokingham in receipt of a means-tested Free School Meals to cover the Christmas holidays 2020 and February half term 2021 (£15 per child per holiday week).  The total cost of this will be approximately £100,000.

We are working closely with schools to ensure that the vouchers covering the Christmas holidays are distributed before the end of this term. We have a plan in place to achieve this and we have systems and support in place which will be ready for schools to use shortly after the Executive Meeting tonight.  Schools have been fully briefed about our plan.

The remainder of the vouchers will be distributed shortly before the beginning of the February half term holiday.

2. Support to be provided to up to 100 Care Leavers with the costs of food and/or energy and the total cost of that will be around £5,000.

We are working closely with our leaving care team to ensure that support is provided at a time over the winter months which best meets the needs of Care Leavers.  We are ready to provide support as advised by our specialist teams.

3. Support to be provided to families and individuals in need who do not fall into the above two categories.  Front-line services who are already in contact with the families and individuals in need will be able to refer them for support via the existing Covid Community Response One Front Door operated by Wokingham Citizens’ Advice Bureau.  The Citizens’ Advice Bureau will assess families and individuals for this and other support and forward details of families in need to the Council who will provide support from the grant funds.  We will monitor carefully the demand from families and individuals for support, and should need exceed the funds available, a further paper detailing need and proposed response will be considered by the Executive.

Supplementary Question

It is about Edenred, who I understand are the proposed supplier for the distribution of the free school meal vouchers.  They were commissioned by the Government to deliver the scheme earlier on in the pandemic and at that time, as I think we are all fully aware, there were very well-publicised problems and delays.  Are you confident that this isn’t going to be repeated?

Supplementary Answer

We are assured that all the issues experienced early in the roll out of the scheme have now been addressed.  We are now also setting up a helpline for school staff, who will be processing the distribution of vouchers via the Edenred portal, so that emerging problems can be dealt with quickly.  No schools have expressed concerns about using Edenred this time round.