STAFF at a Colchester secondary school will be delivering food parcels to families in need this half term.

St Helena School has joined forces with GO4 Cafe and Knights of St Columba to deliver essentials to parents and children who attend the school.

Headteacher Fiona Pierson said: "We will be receiving two large deliveries of food during the half term from the schemes.

"These will then be sorted into parcels according to family size, paying particular attention to the number of children in each of the households, including provision for any babies/infants in the family.

"The parcels will then be loaded into our staff volunteer’s cars and distributed throughout Colchester.

"Our staff have been so keen to do everything they can to help, from offering vehicles to make deliveries, to bringing in food donations.

"We have been collecting donations in our staff room for several months now, and by using those, we have managed to take emergency food parcels to families when they have needed it most.

"Any surplus then gets donated to the Colchester Foodbank."

The school also donated essentials from the school's canteen during lockdown and is a referral agency for Colchester Foodbank.

Ms Pierson added: "We have definitely seen an increase in the number of families requiring support and vouchers being distributed.

"To ensure the foodbank can be accessed by all those that need it, there is a limit on the number of vouchers that a family can be issued within a certain number of months.

"Being able to provide the food parcels is additional support for our families as it doesn’t count towards their foodbank usage.

"We will continue to do everything we can to support our most vulnerable families and encourage our parents and carers to contact the school directly if they feel they are struggling and need our support."