A DENTIST’S staff answered a local homeless charity’s call for help this week by raising enough money to deliver eight sleeping bags and essential food.
Cudworth Dental Surgery, based on Barnsley Road, handed over the sleeping bags on Tuesday afternoon after raising more than £200 in funds and donating a substantial amount of food.
Practice manager Kelly Haigh, alongside receptionist Beryl Vickers, led the charge to help Barnsley Rough Sleepers Project after seeing the charity’s impassioned plea online.
Kelly told the Chronicle: “We raised the funds in-house as staff donated money and food because we’re not seeing many patients at the moment.
“We raised £210 for the sleeping bags and we bought some more food with the remainder of the money after we heard about the government not funding free school dinners for children.
“It was a bit too late to help with that so we decided to help with the homeless plea after we saw they needed help online.”
There are currently around 320,000 homeless people in the UK, and homeless cases grew significantly in September which led the charity to warn that if urgent action wasn’t taken, people will die on the streets of Barnsley during winter.
“We’ve previously held charity events to raise money in the past so this isn’t the first,” she added.
“We only decided to do this last week so it’s great that we’ve been able to donate what we have.
“None of this was done for recognition, we just wanted to help out with a plea we saw from the charity.”
