A FLINTSHIRE community has come together through the pandemic to ensure no family gets too close to a crisis situation.

Vicar of Holywell, Father Dominic Cawdell, spoke with the Leader about the success of the church's food bank set up in St Peter's Church, on Rose Hill - behind Lidl, at the start of the first national lockdown in March 2020.

The food club offers up a space in the church where people could come on a Thursday afternoon and get up to 15 items of shopping for just £2 - including both food, toiletries and other essentials.

Since opening, the club has continued to support the community and pledged to remain providing the service until the end of March 2021 at least.

Father Dominic said: "It all started as a way for people to come and get a bag of shopping for £2 - especially as things got more difficult for people going onto furlough and sadly losing jobs along with other changes in circumstance.

"But its really grown a lot since then. As well as food we have a place to signpost people towards other help they may need that we can't necessarily provide and I suppose a little community has grown with us and also around us too."

The initiative was designed to have "no barriers", explained Father Dominic, and help people through difficult times in their life.

He said: "People can sometimes find it quite difficult to access a food bank unless you're in real desperate need. The point of what we were doing was essentially to catch though before they fell into that point of crisis. We were also there for those in that situation too but we hoped something like this would prevent the already mounting pressures on food banks."

As well as food, the £2 Club also stepped up when families that came to them expressed anxiety around Christmas.

Hampers to cook a Christmas dinner were provided - including vouchers for fresh meat - to families as well as the usual shop.

They also had hundreds of new (or nearly new) Christmas gifts donated so that families could give children presents and didn't have to go without.

The scheme will be guaranteed to run from the church until the end of March and are looking at ways they can continue to offer this kind of support.

Fr Dominc told the Leader: "We've got a meeting set up with the town council and others about how we can maybe continue with the club after then as I really don't think the need will just disappear.

"Some of our volunteers have been doing this every week now for almost a year and we need to also find a way of financing this project to keep it alive."

The £2 Club was initially given a grant to be able to get the project up and running but they now also rely on the generosity of the public making donations to keep their shelves stocked.

"We've had donations from local groups, people in the church and even from people just bringing along whatever they could spare. Some of our local councillors were out collecting in their areas and Lidl have been a big help with food donations too.

"The community have really got behind us on this."

People are able to get help from the church easily, says Fr Dominic, by coming along to St Peter's when the club is set up on Thursday's between 12 and 1.30pm.

If you want to help keep the £2 Club stocked, they are always willing to accept any spare donations of non-perishable items or toiletries.

The church have a Facebook group where they post updates about the scheme. You can join by going to www.facebook.com/groups/324607918501410.