Free breakfast club-offensive government campaign

I agree, it's getting more & more anti family as time goes on..when I was a kid & when my kids were young we had breakfast without fail. I'm not saying a full cooked but we didn't leave the house on an empty stomach. To say that people can't afford breakfast says to me that money is being used for other things instead of feeding the kids. I know il get backlash but I don't care

It is strange. Assume it is to increase the update to have the stats to boast about how well their policies are doing.
Anyone which needs breakfast club to get to work will already be doing so. This advert is targeting those that don't need it by making out you could be doing better things with your time than providing a breakfast for your child.
When my DD was in primary I worked part time. She would be in breakfast club the days I worked, or later on went to uni, she would be having breakfast at home the days I didn't have anywhere to get to.
Don't think it is a positive thing to promote providing for your child in your free time as a time wasted.
Edited to add it has been free here all that time but still mainly only the workers would take it up.
A simple poster of breakfast club is now free for all would do it, without implying doing it at home is a waste of time

Im not sure how providing free breakfast club to children, some of whom wouldn't even have a breakfast before school at home is comparable to this. There are a huge amount of children who will benefit from food first thing and starting school on time.

The OP has another thread going on how it’s a ‘shame’ some mums are ‘forced’ to go back to work. It seems they are offended by initiatives which support women back into the workplace.

I hate having to use breakfast club.

On the days ds age 6 is home, he has time for 20 mins of reading and spelling practice before cycling or scooting to school. It’s calm, high-quality time with my son where we connect and ready ourselves for the day ahead.

Versus breakfast-club days when we are dashing to get out for 7.30am.

I don’t mind toast and diluted juice though! He has fruit at breaktime and veg after school. What’s wrong with juice and toast?

Your post is so bizarre, I can only assume it is politically motivated.

I used to work for a cleaning company who's website suggested people should hire cleaners so they can free up some time ..then suggested stupid stuff like "to read a good book" or "have some retail therapy"
People use services for important stuff I thought...

Why are you saying Diddums to a teacher being massively overworked following the sacking of their colleagues? That’s a really weird reply.

I don’t understand where people find the time and mental energy to get all wound up about this sort of thing though.

Not busy enough.

Right - so having a daily breakfast clubs which allows slightly earlier drop off makes life much easier vs having to arrange all sorts of elaborate plans and negotiations with work because you can’t physically drop your child off then get to work on time…!

Omg you've completely missed my point.
I do not think it is good for children to have such a long day in school amd childcare (e.g 8am til 6pm), nor to be fed a cheap, poor quality diet at school. there is a breakfast club at my children's school. It would be easier for me to use it but I do not, because I think the effort is outweighed by the negative impacts on the child. I think there should he a focus on balancing helping parents retain a career, but not constantly at the expense of children's wellbeing.

I am a big proponent of parents working. I work 30 hours a week. But i think that central initiatives need to balance considering what is best for children's wellbeing and not only what enables adults to work as many hours as possible.

I work from home with some flexibility - my kids have never had home made sour dough toast for breakfast. Breakfast clubs serve a purpose, if you don’t need them, don’t use them but let’s not shame parents who don’t have time to lovingly make avocado on toast for their precious offspring before school.

Having cereal and toast at school isn’t going to undermine an otherwise healthy diet, and may just provide food for children whose parents are struggling for whatever reason.

You're over-interprering it. You think that's a list of suggestions for parents to do without their children? Watching Peppa?

It's just a way of visualising the number of hours. Don't sweat it.

I see it at our school. The kids of the poorest parents are being fed all this shit, while the better off kids have parents who can afford to work part time/flexibly/wfh and are arriving at school having had porridge and fresh fruit, eggs and home made sourdough toast.

I work in a school, I often but the school porridge, it's lovely!

I'm p/t & sometimes drop a dc early to breakfast club as they want to go. Obviously on other mornings I bake bread and we eat together to repent for my sins.

There will be families who would benefit from sending their children to breakfast club who currently don't out of pride / shame. I see the message of the poster as being, 'breakfast club is here if you want it, it's available to everyone, here's a silly poster to advertise it'

There are a number of posters on this thread that seem to want the message to be 'are you a poor who can't afford bread? Are you one of those tragic working mums? Poor you <head tilt>, such a shame the government has to fork out to provide for your kids, but nevermind, here's breakfast club <cries in upf> , you'll be in our prayers'

I remember that attitude from the 80s, let's not go back there, eh.

Precisely.

Plus it's taxpayer money paying for that marketing. They have to advertise it because the take up rate by schools is so low due to the lack of funding. Instead of increasing the funding they pay for marketing. Fucking batshittery

Yes unfortunately and no amount of expensive marketing campaigns are likely to change that.

Well our school has had to stop offering any food at breakfast club because it was too expensive to do so once you took into account all the paperwork and extra staffing to be able to offer it. So I’m pretty sceptical that the government’s offering is in any way about health of children as opposed to a way of getting more mothers into the full time workforce.

When they did offer breakfast it was just Rice Krispies or sliced bread with margarine - ie very cheap (so affordable to low income families anyway) and easy to make (so even pretty chaotic households could manage it, or even their children could). Fair enough - one would hardly expect the school to be offering scrambled eggs and smoked salmon, but let’s not pretend that offering kids a free bowl of cheap cereal is somehow going to sort out poverty and malnutrition. There are far more effective things that could be done to tackle that.

I don’t object to them offering more wraparound childcare to support working parents, but they should call it that and not pretend that it is about child nutrition or educational standards.

That advert makes me wonder what the rationale of this policy actually is. This suggests it’s less about feeding children and getting parents into work, and more about saying “if you get your kids out of the house earlier, just think of all those peaceful cups of tea and trips to Spain you could have”. Taxpayers’ money is being spent on ridiculous publicity like this.

And those are the children who are least likely to be dropped at school early in order to access a "free" breakfast

I don’t think the poster is offensive at all.

I’ve never had to use a breakfast club despite being a working mother but I think they are a brilliant thing not only to allow parents to get to work on time but also to feed children who have parents who either can’t or won’t feed them breakfast.

My Mum never gave us breakfast because she didn’t like eating breakfast so in her head why would we? (it took me having my own DC to realise how bad that was!) My DC will both talk about kids in their classes who are going round begging others for something for a morning snack because they are starving and haven’t have breakfast and haven’t been given any snacks for school. These IMO are the kids who need breakfast club because it isn’t the child’s fault that their parents can’t or won’t provide food for them.

I‘m not making scrambled eggs or anything that that involves cooking in a morning,there simply isn’t time while trying to get ready for work and get DS sorted for school. It’s toast or cereal and fruit if they’re still hungry.

It also sounds ignorant as if all parents are able to have breakfast with their kids in the morning.

My dad left the house at 5 am and my mother at 7 am or 7:30. Younger sister and I had school at 8:45, then I had it at 8:25 in secondary and her 8:45 so we would leave the house at the same time, me to school and her to the bus stop at the end of the street. We rarely had breakfast with our parents. Didn’t stop us from succeeding.

We had dinners together though.

Just an fyi when you share ig links these days it shows the account that’s sharing it along with the profile pic etc. just incase you want mumsnet to delete it.

Probably because most people can't function if they can't find something to be offended by.