Welcome to St David’s Baby Bank
St David’s Baby Bank was set up by the Knit and Natter group to support young families in the heart of the community by helping clothe babies and toddlers. Based at St David’s church in Merthyr Tydfil, South Wales, the Baby Bank is for baby essentials. We receive donations of new and pre-loved items for newborns to 3-year-olds from the local community and give them to families who are in urgent need of help. We provide clothes, nappies, toiletries, blankets, bottles, sterilisers, changing mats, Moses baskets, baby baths and more.
How we can help you
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Families
Are you a mam, dad or family that needs help? Ask your doctor, midwife, health visitor or other health professional to refer you to us. Or you can get in touch with us direct.
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Health Professionals
If you are working with a family that needs help, please get in touch for a referral form. We can provide essentials for newborn to 3-year olds and toiletries for mams too.
How you can help us
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We need your support
We rely on donations so please consider supporting us. You can donate money online, pre-loved items in good condition, or new items such as nappies, toiletries etc. We will shortly have an online Wishlist where you can purchase items to be sent to us direct.
If you think you can help us in other ways, please get in touch.
PLEASE NOTE WHAT WE CANNOT ACCEPT
We would like to accept all donations, but due to storage and safety restrictions, we cannot accept food products, toys, prams or pushchairs, full-size cots, electrical items, car seats and baby walkers. Ask your social worker or health professional to refer you.
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Please support us
Donate money online
Donate pre-loved items in good condition
Purchase from our Wishlist (coming shortly)
Donate new items as below
Nappies
Baby toiletries
Mam toiletries
Sterilisers (non-electrical)
Baby clothes
Blankets
Bottles
Changing mats
Moses baskets
Baby baths
Bouncy chairs
Baby gyms
Travel cots (boxed)
Donate here
We rely on donations from the community. If you would like to help us financially please donate through our Give a Little campaign page at the following link. Thank you.
St David’s Church and St David’s Baby Bank have been verified by the Give A Little fundraising platform
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How we started the Baby Bank
The Knit & Natter group at St David’s church was set up for fellowship, friendship and fun, as well as to help the community. Meeting on Mondays at 2pm at St David’s, we knit warm clothing and other items for charity and good causes, including for homeless people, hats for newborn babies, twiddle mitts for local groups of Dementia Friendly and the Alzheimer’s Society and more. Everyone is welcome and you don’t have to knit.
The idea of a baby bank developed during the first lockdown. As we couldn’t meet face to face we kept in contact with each other via a WhatsApp group and a weekly Zoom meeting - and we continued to knit!
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At the time our project was knitting hats for neonatal babies. We knitted over 1000 and donated them to Prince Charles Hospital, Merthyr Tydfil and the University Hospital of Wales, Cardiff.
To keep our interest, we looked for other projects and started knitting baby cardigans, hats and blankets while thinking about outlets that could use what we produced.
And so, the seed of an idea was formed. We thought we could use our efforts to serve the local community by supplementing our knitted garments with pre-loved baby essentials and match these items with young families who needed them.Now, as well as producing our knitted garments we collect good quality baby clothes and equipment and redistribute them to young families who need a helping hand. We supplement the clothes and equipment with donated nappies and toiletries in the hope we can contribute to all babies having a fair and good start in life.
As well as supporting these young families practically we are looking to the future too. We want to help the environment, so the young babies we help today have the chance of a secure future in years to come.
We want St David’s Baby Bank to be as green an enterprise as we can make it. So we will recycle as many preloved items as we can so saving them from landfill as well as using only recycled and recyclable packaging and avoiding plastics where possible.
We want St David’s Baby Bank to help the local community today while ensuring we keep a close eye on the world of tomorrow.
More about us
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Our Patron
The Patron of St David’s Baby Bank is Dawn Bowden AM. Like us, Dawn is passionate about the community and families in Merthyr Tydfil. We are so grateful for her support and she is also an authorised referrer to the baby bank.
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The High Sherrif Award
In 2022 we were delighted to receive The High Sherrif of Mid Glamorgan Award from Maria Thomas in recognition of ‘worthy and valuable voluntary contribution to families in the community of Merthyr Tydfil’.
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St David's Church
St David’s Church in Merthyr Tydfil is home to the Knit & Natter group, who set up and run the baby bank from the building. St David’s is part of the Merthyr Tydfil Ministry Area, which has eight churches and stretches from Dowlais to Merthyr Vale.
CONTACT US
We are a very friendly group at St David's Baby Bank so please get in touch if you need help or have any questions.
Tel: Lynda Price 07858 487034
Tel: Dorothy Evans 07766 240585
Email: stdavidsbabybank@gmail.com
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