Clothing bank charity run by Bedhampton mum to help many children in Portsmouth facing poverty

Sally Codling runs KidsClothesLine, a charity which collects unwanted clothes and distributes them to struggling families.

Sally has been running the charity since August 2020 at an upstairs space in the premises of CTS Europe at Hilsea where she packs ‘wardrobes in a bag’ to suit the required child’s age – often with enough hand-me-downs to pack them out for a whole season.

Many donations come through people clearing out their unwanted ‘stuff’ through Sally’s Facebook group, Donations only KidsClothesLine Hampshire, that she created two years ago.

She then sorts out packages with the help of her volunteers to be discreetly delivered to health care providers in touch with someone in need, family hubs such as Somerstown and Buckland, Roberts Centre Day Nursery, schools and charity Baby Basics at North End.

In November, the charity provided 90 clothing packages to families across Portsmouth and a further 60 in December, and even though the surge in demand has flattened now Christmas is over, Sally is prepared for an increase in people seeking help who wouldn’t usually be in this position.

Sally said: ‘We have over 800 people who donate to us ensuring that as well as helping lots of families who are struggling, we are also recycling tonnes of clothes that may well have ended up in landfill.

‘[Kids Clothing Line] is a hand up not a hand down. It's supposed to be just from one family to another. These are clothes that our children have grown out of, it's good if somebody else's family can use them.’

‘Charity shops were closed during the pandemic and then you had to pay for them, whereas this is a completely free service.’

Sally emphasises that nobody should be made to feel as if they are a charity case.

Kid’s Clothing Line can kindly offer their support without the recipients being delivered the clothing face-to-face through Sally or the volunteers;

Sue Summers, Teresa Rowe, Sue Woods and their delivery driver Ian – all from Portsmouth.

Sally started up the charity when on dropping her own children’s cut offs to a charity shop or to a clothes bank, she discovered piles of ‘stuff’ lined up in plastic bags.

‘A lot of this stuff was going to end up being ragged,’ she said.

‘I knew there were a lot of families that were really struggling and I thought it would be a good way to just keep the cycle going because nothing's ever worn out with children usually.’

Although Sally says she’s ‘pleased’ to be busy because she knows her and her group of volunteers are helping a lot of people, she echoes that the flipside is there is still an obvious need there for services like hers.

She said: ‘A lot of the people who come to us are working their socks off. They can't make ends meet. Some are the same people that have never used food banks before.

‘Through no fault of their own they're working really hard.

‘It could happen to anybody. You never know what's round the corner.’

A message from the Editor, Mark Waldron

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