To ask why do people not working claiming FSM get this for free?

This^
You don’t want my life OP, trust me. No amount of school meals or holiday clubs make up for it. I wish holiday club jealousy was my only problem

Yes of course. But the people getting jealous over others having decent cars may not realize this. many disabilities are invisible.

Expecting this kind of post to start to crop up with ever increasing frequency if a general election is forthcoming. Sad really. Get us all to fight amongst ourselves to distract from the shit show in government.

One of the reasons they stopped taking it into account for benefits was because of how unreliable it was. Rather than enforce child maintenance payments, the government would rather let their their business owning mates pay crap wages so people have to claim top ups and make the taxpayer pay for it.

If they have a Motability car they or one of their family will be disabled.

It's for the benefit of the children, not the parents. These sort of things have been shown to benefit children seen as 'disadvantaged'.

Yes this is definitely something the government need to address.

And many more get nothing at all.

That may be so but many do get it paid regularly and in significant amounts..

@Pocoyoismyhomeboy but that is their earnings that are 'disgustingly low'
Not how much they have to spend. If means 20% of school age - children are in homes where noone is working over 15hrs min wage.

Once more free hours preschool care come in hopefully we will see the % fsm drop?

As 80% of childrens parent (s) and other taxpayers are funding both sets of kids.
its £493 per year here per child for every day lunches. So almost 1k for 2 kids.
then 700-800 per year for school bus...
then people have to fund kids possibly through uni.

so cost of having a child
£500x11yrs school lunches = £5500
swimming lessons (28/mth/3yrs)= £1000
£15 per school day before/after clubs
=£2925x5yrs = £14625
Food??maybe £2 per day for 18yrs =13140

school bus £700x7yrs = £4900

14 yrs school shoes trainers £1680
Uniform 14y. £700
School trips £50 per year. £700
But the majority of that wont be a cost to those on fsm

Have to say i didnt expect most of those costs to be so high. (Lunch 2.53 is a lot considering meal deal prices, school bus would have thought based on paying child fayres, breakfast club (its only 45min). School trips too as y6 trip was several hundred.

Huh? I'm on UC, with full ct support and my housing gets paid. I'm a full time carer before you start.
Weird to state I think it's cushty when you have no idea of my own situation

The unpaid child maintenance bill is in the BILLIONS.

More likely working cash in hand or receiving decent amount of CM or have a motorbility car.

Yes, includes rent and child element for 1 child.

£19k per annum is nothing. They're hardly going to be living a life of luxury on that. A single person with no children living on £19k per annum wouldn't need free school meals, and anyone earning that with children would be getting UC on top of that. If you're trying to raise children on £1400 a month, paying bills and rent out of that, you need FSM.

Housing is paid through UC these days. And they don’t cover all of the rent, just what the local housing allowance is. And everyone has to pay some council tax now, it’s really not as cushty as you seem to think.

Has it occurred to you that they are living on credit? Benefits really don’t pay that much, there’s no way people claiming free school meals would afford a car and the best clothes.

I mean, if you have a mortgage yes. If you pay rent then you'd get housing benefit and probably get your rent and council tax sorted (situation dependent).

I'm a carer. I work 35 hours + a week as one for £76.75 a week. That's why we get FSM, that's why I don't legally work.

How many people on here have actually gone on entitledto, and realised how much they would be worse off on UC than living on the income they actually live off?

£2038.40 per month for my family of 4, if we had no other income.
The roof over our head alone costs £1200. Fuck, that'd be a tough life.

I'll put my tin hat on:
The government uses benefits as a marker to define which children are most likely to be vulnerable
The government uses benefits as a method of propping up employers paying low wages and ensuring control over working people now forced onto benefits to cope, and then encourages you to fight among yourselves for who gets what, and question who is or isn't deserving instead of you questioning why they are running the country the way they are.

It's the people on the threshold I really feel for {I've never had housing benefit or any of the free stuff} .. workers CAN well be worse off than people on benefits, they have to pay Council tax, mortgage {Benefits don't pay mortgages as far as I know} - a pharmacist I knew said those who were on threshold were the strugglers.. they had no right to free prescriptions,&c and used to tell him that they were ''better off'' on benefits, especially if getting housing benefit, which seems insane.

Yes of course I have. I lived in some! My favourite was the one with subsidence where I could see through the crack in the wall into next door.

Anyway, the poster I was replying to was talking about social housing. Saying that some SA housing is poor is not the same as saying all private rentals are tip top.

All tenancies should be secure. But then private landlords would not be able to behave as some of them do, so it will never happen. Thank Thatcher for ending secure tenancies. Her policies have led to where we ate now with housing.

It's so sad to see so many on this thread give in to envy and resentment. It shouldn't be a race to the bottom. The solution is to adjust the threshold for getting help. The solution is to invest in childcare - not just before and after school but all childcare, making it always affordable for people to work and earn. The UK gets this very wrong.

Wby don't you either get a better paying job or reduce your income to FSM level? Either way, jealousy of people poorer than you is a rubbish look 🤷‍♀️.

I think it's sad that some here cannot see that many of these children would not eat during the school holidays without access to these programmes.
MIL works in a setting that now provides some of these programmes. A lot of these children's lives are pretty sad.
Yes, many on here are saying that it's another bill that they just manahe to pay.
Many of these families couldn't pay for the food their children would need to eat, let alone the activities.

I can't understand being pissed off that kids are being fed that wouldn't otherwise be.

Yes, life is tough for us all at the moment, but let's not add children frwquently havung malnutrition to the list of harsh realities were facing.