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A mum who launched an initiative to help Edinburgh parents has said ‘hundreds’ of pounds’ are being spent on each child for school uniforms.
Sara Thomson, who owns Leith Collective, began a coat exchange at her Ocean Terminal shop in 2021. Since realising the growing need for help, Sara has started doing a school uniform exchange at four locations across Scotland – Ocean Terminal, Fort Kinnaird, Livingston Designer Outlet and Dundee Overgate.
A mother-of-two herself, Sara knows the struggle of keeping your family warm, fed and clothed. Beyond the ‘huge’ cost of school uniform, the initiative also aims to ensure children aren’t bullied for standing out in ‘non-school uniform or ill-fitting outfits’.
Speaking to Edinburgh Live, Sara said: “We do the coat exchange, which started years ago, and we realised how popular that had become. There was such a need.
“We started it to be sustainable, because there’s a lot of plastic waste in clothing. Then we saw people are financially struggling big time – and it was actually helping them out in other ways.
“We’re also removing stigma from taking second-hand garments from people, and making it more socially acceptable. We started the school clothes exchange, because people were asking if we had shoes or a jumper and things.
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“Old school clothes are actually one of the biggest waste going in terms of clothing, because you buy the the the jumper with the logo on it, you could hand it into a charity shop but the chances of it being bought are very slim because obviously it’s branded.”
Sara believes the cost for a family with two children going to school can reach around £800. She says the parents who are using the exchange are often both working full-time, but simply ‘don’t have the money’.
She added: “People can’t afford the simple basics of school clothing because its hundreds of pounds for one child to go to school these days.
“Children grow out of their clothes from basically mid-term, so they get half a term out of one set of clothing and then half a term at the second. Parents are saying that this has been a godsend to them because the amount of clothes that they go through at school, firstly, and secondly, they don’t have the money to replace it.
“By coming to us and getting trousers and a pin of fur or a coat, it’s half of what they’ve been putting out. They can use the use extra money somewhere else in the family like put food on the table, or pay the bills, or school trips.”
The coat exchange began back in 2021, and has grown hugely over the years. However, Sara didn’t plan for it to happen when she was looking to find a way to get rid of her kids coats.
She told us: “I saw my kids’ jackets in the hallway that they pretended to wear but then took off the stuff in their bags on their way to school. There was nothing wrong with them, but they just refused to wear coats as you do when you’re a teenager.
“I put them outside the shop with a sign up saying ‘if you need it take it’, and thought nothing of it. Next thing we had 500 coats in from people, and it’s just got bigger and bigger.
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“Each year now we do a minimum of 10,000 coats a year. We donate to charities, homeless shelters, people come from social work to collect coats because they can’t afford heating and they don’t get tokens now for heating bills, so they take two or three coats at a time to keep warm overnight. Old age pensioners come to two or three coats at a time because they can’t afford to put the heating on.
“We know how hard it is when you’ve got a family, you’re trying to keep them warm, and you’re trying to keep food on the table, and you’re working really hard. You’re working a lot of hours, and you just feel like there’s nothing at the end of it.
“So by helping people just a wee bit, you’re bringing back communities, you’re allowing people to help others in ways that we were doing years ago but we stopped doing. I just know how hard it is when people are working really hard and you want the best for your children, you also don’t want them being picked on.”
You can find out more about the Leith Collective and how to exchange clothing here.
