Guernsey Welfare Service

We work with a variety of people who find themselves in financial need.

This includes single-parent families, pensioners, people with disabilities or long-term medical conditions and families on low incomes who may find themselves with unexpected medical or household bills that put them in financial difficulty.

Vouchers

We provide practical help to those in need through vouchers for essential commodities such as fresh food, heating, household necessities, baby formula and nappies, baby equipment and children’s clothing. We do not want to make people dependent on us so can’t help too regularly or in large amounts.

Foodbank

We also provide practical help to those in need by providing items from our foodbank. This is the best way we can help as we have very generous donors and usually a well stocked cupboard of essential store cupboard items such as tea, cereal, pasta, tuna, soup, beans, vegetables, fruit, puddings, jam, biscuits, sugar and squash.

Even when we are unable to help in any other way we are usually happy for people to take items from our foodbank.

Tree of Joy

The Rotary Club do a wonderful job each year of organising the Tree of Joy where members of the public can purchase gifts providing Christmas presents for children who might not otherwise receive much.

We are pleased to support their work by acting as an agency forwarding nominations for such children and distributing the gifts to our clients. If you would like us to nominate your child to receive a gift at Christmas, please call into the office during opening hours between 1st September and 31st October and we will have a chat and ask you to complete a form.

Signposting

We act as a signposting service and information centre, pointing people in the direction of other community services, charities or States departments that may be able to assist them.

From time to time we liaise directly with these other agencies on behalf of our clients if their situation is more complex and they require a mediating body.

We seek to function as a ‘listening ear’, to make ourselves available to those in genuine need and offer support and practical help to them through difficult times.

Clients

We operate a client based system and ask people to register with us to use our service.

Referrals

We take referrals from individuals and support workers.