Yorkshire Children’s Charity is preparing to distribute 40,000 essential items, including winter coats, shoes and bedding, to children living in poverty. The charity says the support aims to ensure children arrive at school warm, dry and ready to learn, while highlighting the severe scale of need across the region.

Chief executive Charlotte Farrington said teachers had referred children for help because they knew their circumstances best, and urged more schools to make contact. She said some children had slept in donated jackets or shared school shoes, while government figures show 31% of children in Yorkshire and the Humber were living in low-income families in the year to April 2025; the Joseph Rowntree Foundation estimates about 2,500 children in Yorkshire are destitute.