“Twelve bags, mainly men’s and baby’s clothes. All washed and clean,” Dawn Wilson lists, pleased, as she checks through the latest donations collected from her local area.
Wilson, in her forties, has been co-running the Durham Socialist Clothes bank for three months now. She’s a full-time carer for her disabled husband and is characteristic of what is emerging as a makeshift frontline service up and down the country: volunteers, often on benefits or low wages themselves, filling in the gaps now being left by the state.
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