Period Poverty

This is terrible, i will defo be putting some form of sanitary wear in the food bank trolley in my local supermarket tomorrow. How awful for those young girls.

A pilot scheme in Aberdeen is now being rolled out in Scotland to provide protection for all women in education as well as through FareShare.
Another example of Holyrood's priorities being so different from those of Wasteminster.

The idea that young girls have to suffer such humiliation in this day and age makes me want to weep.

I agree with gilly supplies should be freely available in schools, just as loo paper and paper towels are.

gillybob thank you

I think many of the big supermarkets cover this voluntarily though.

Happy to be corrected but I believe there is a 5% VAT tariff on sanitary products rather than the standard 20%.

Goldengirl I think our parliament wanted to remove VAT on sanitary products but had its hand tied by EU parliament.

Hopefully some other gransnetter will know about this.

We have a section at our Church foodbank where we can donate personal items we are lucky enough to be able to keep it well stocked,one of our ladies goes on a regular basis for donations to stores and requests items to help keep it topped up and the said stores are very supportive.

Maybe we at Gransnet should start our own campaign to provide sanitary protection free of charge in all schools for those who need it.

I was very lucky to work in a school which provided free sanitary products for our pupils. Anyone could get a pad during the day if they needed one, regardless of their personal circumstances and several people around the school kept a supply. If we thought it necessary, we would discreetly provide enough for the whole period, we tended to know which families genuinely could not afford to buy products. We also has our own food bank and families were referred to it by various agencies.

There was a suggestion in Parliament once that VAT should come off sanitary protection. Did it ever happen? Or is it still considered a 'luxury' item!!!!
Some schools provide sanitary protection for free but of course it eats into their education budget. However as it affects all women at some point in their lives for a considerable number of years the need should be taken seriously. But it's like public toilet provision - there's no legal obligation on councils to provide them.

That's heartbreaking grannyactivist and hard to believe that some young women might be still suffering this humiliation today.

Maybe there should be a scheme in schools where young women can pick sanitary products up for free.

Check out the Red Box Project who can help you start up a local project in your area.
I have first hand experience of this, as I suspect have many others on Gransnet. As a teenager in the early 60's we had no money to spend on sanitary products and so we used rags. One of the worst experiences of my life was being unable to leave the classroom at the end of the day because I was sitting in a pool of blood and had to wait for everyone else to leave before I could move from my chair. I didn't go back to school that week.

Our WI regularly donate sanitary products to our local women's refuge, a homeless project and the local foodbank.

We have an ongoing project where we donate a bag (we call it handbags and gladrags) full of items specific to young women for example sanitary towels, tampons, roll on deodrants (sprays are not allowed), soap, sponges, wet wipes etc.

Not sure if there is a nationwide project though. I would be happy to help if there was. I can't begin to imagine what it must be like for these poor young girls.