‘A lovely day’ - 50 South Tyneside children receive free ‘back to school’ haircuts

As the new school term draws closer, 50 children from across the borough received a free ‘back to school’ haircut on Sunday, August 25.

It was all made possible by organiser Rebecca Richman, who teams up with Hebburn Helps each year to provide free haircuts to children in South Tyneside.

Around 320 haircut vouchers are allocated each year through Hebburn Helps, local schools and South Tyneside’s health visitors.

Volunteers from Hebburn Helps transformed The Den, based at St Johns Precinct, into a makeshift salon so Rebecca, along with Stacey Foster and Stacey Dent, from Union Barbers in Jarrow, could cut the children’s hair for free.

Rebecca said: “It was just such a lovely day, we had activities for the children to keep them entertained while they waited and there was Disney music playing as well.

“Things like this can be stressful but Rachael and Micky from Hebburn Helps were on hand to help throughout the day.

“Thanks to Hebburn Helps, every child received a drink, a snack and a teddy bear - it was lovely to see the kids digging through the box to find the all the different bears.

“In the end, we managed to cut the hair of 50 children between 10am and 2pm so it worked out to be a bit of an easy day really.

“I even had a little girl hand me a thank you card which just makes it all worth it.

“I can’t thank the team at Hebburn Helps, as well as Stacey and Stacey enough for their help - everyone just came together straight away to help sort it.”

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Rebecca organises two haircut events like this a year, with the next one set to be held just in time for Christmas.

She added: “We do this twice a year so we are now looking for a place to host our Christmas one as Hebburn Helps are obviously busy with other things around the festive period.

“For the Christmas events, we make sure that the children get a something like a chocolate Santa or a selection box to take away with them.

“Basically it is all about making it as special as possible so I’m now looking forward to getting that arranged.”