Volunteers hailed after thousands of free meals delivered in Sheffield

Since the government ordered schools to close last month the council has been delivering free, nutritious food packages to children who would otherwise receive a free school meal.

The service has been headed up by Leah Barratt, who has worked at the council for more than 30 years. She is helped by a “small army” of volunteers and local authority workers giving up their time to help.

On Monday, they delivered no fewer than 4394 meals throughout Sheffield.

The Star was informed of their heroic efforts by a member of Leah’s family, who wanted the people of Sheffield “to know that the council is working extremely hard behind the scenes”. The woman did not want to be named as she did not want Leah to know who had championed her and her team’s work.

She said: “There’s lots of visible people that we see, like police officers and supermarket workers, but sometimes there’s people in the background that you can’t see that are working just as hard. All the people that are visible, we can say thank you to them.

“Leah’s team have been amazing, they have just pulled out every stop.”

The food packages contain healthy ingredients to make meals with, as well as fruit and other nutritious snacks.

The woman added: “They have been at it for weeks trying to get everything in the right place at the right time.

“There’s four thousand families that have got food on their table and in their cupboards because of what the school meals service has done – I’m very proud.”

Any surplus food has also been donated to food banks in Sheffield.

“The council always gets a good hammering, it’s an easy target,” the woman said.

“Council budgets have been cut massively over the last couple of years and people are ready and willing to pull them down. But they are there and looking after your children while this crisis is on.”