One more summer, the Valladolid Provincial Council has launched the feeding program for vulnerable children in the province, which will serve 140 minors with an action that is part of the agreement that the Valladolid Provincial Council signs annually with the Red Cross and Caritas.
The service aims to support during school vacation periods the attention to essential basic needs, especially food, of minors enrolled in compulsory education and early childhood education who usually use the dining room services of the educational centers they attend.
The beneficiaries of this program are the family units that are responsible for minors enrolled in educational centers, sources from the provincial institution have informed Europa Press.
In order to guarantee the efficiency of the management and a correct feeding of the minors, once the situation of need has been assessed by the professionals of the CEAS, each case is referred to the corresponding distribution entity (Cáritas or Red Cross) which, before school holidays, gives parents a prepaid card along with a list of basic products so that they can buy food in supermarkets to ensure a balanced and healthy diet.
The amounts of the cards vary depending on the minors in the family unit and the amounts determined according to the number of vacation days.
After the end of the school year on June 23, with the consequent closure of school canteens, one more year has proceeded to the delivery, in a first phase, of cards so that the affected families can access the acquisition of infant food during the month of July and the last week of June.
In this first phase there are 140 minors registered to benefit from the program during the summer holidays and the cards distributed reach an amount of 44,293 euros.
By area, the largest number of cards correspond to the CEAS of Tordesillas (20 cards), Cercanias 2 and Portillo (18 cards in each CEAS), Cercanias 1 and Peñafiel (17 cards in each CEAS) followed by the CEAS Íscar and Tierra de Campos. South (twelve cards in each CEAS), Valoria Valle de Esgueva (eleven) and Tierra de Campos North, Pinoduero (seven) and Olmedo (four).
A second card delivery period is established to cover the month of August and the first eight days of September, until the start of the school year scheduled for September 9.
In this way, the collaborating entities can check, before the delivery of the second card, if it has been used correctly and if the products appropriate to the characteristics of the minors have been purchased, according to the list of products provided. , thus guaranteeing the correct feeding of the children of the province.
The program was launched during the 2016 vacations in order to guarantee a balanced diet for schoolchildren in the province belonging to families with low incomes and/or at risk of poverty during the summer period, taking into account the closure of the school canteens.
In a first stage, the service was organized through the Home Food program, which in the summer of 2016 brought lunch and dinner appropriate to the age, health and cultural characteristics of 150 minors from 26 municipalities in the province of Valladolid.
However, and with the ultimate goal of constantly improving the quality of life in the municipalities of the province, with special attention to children and the most vulnerable, in December 2016 and coinciding with the Christmas holidays, the Diputación de Valladolid decided to provide the service by expanding the existing Agreements with Cáritas and the Red Cross to attend to various situations of social inclusion.
In this way, a system of prepaid cards and purchase vouchers was enabled, distributed by both entities, so that families could purchase the necessary food directly in the food chains.
The purpose was to avoid a possible stigmatization of minors before the arrival at their homes of the vehicles that distributed food at home, added the Provincial Council.
