Who would be cooking these fsm during the school holidays?

[CherryCocktails]

Genuinely interested in peoples thoughts on this.

I work in school meals and most of the staff are doing the job because it fits around their families during term time and during school hours. To work during school holidays would mean staff either have to pay out for childcare and/or declare overtime for any benefits they claim so a no win situation.

I agree that children should have a meal during holidays but realistically who would be providing it?

The campaign is for supermarket food vouchers, as was provided during lockdown and the summer holidays, not actual meals.

I thought the idea was they would get vouchers?

In the previous holidays we haven't provided actual food but given parents £15 supermarket vouchers, via some online system I think but I am in the classroom not office so not 100% sure.

Fsm over lockdown varied depending on the meal providers, in our local area they were hampers given out weekly, containing sandwich items, some people had ingredients to cook meals such as rice, pasta and veggies there was also a voucher that can be used in supermarkets to buy food.

We provided hampers during lockdown where staff worked throughout the holidays. It was ok during lockdown but not a long term solution..

As above. It's about providing vouchers for food, they aren't expecting canteen staff to be in cooking and school opening up to serve the children meals during the holidays.

Here it's just supermarket vouchers.

I don't get free school meals but in Pembrokeshire during the lockdown and in holidays (also given if you have to isolate with a child in receipt of fsm) you get something like £20 a week per child paid into your bank. Don't quote me on it but it's roughly that amount if I remember.

It won’t be cooked dinners each day-it’ll be vouchers, just like all the weeks over the summer.

That's a very valid query and though I'm disgusted at the Tory voting in this, the practical solutions do need resolving.
I'm guessing the expensive and short term solution will likely be short term catering contracts per local authority.

I volunteered last night for a community group in my area set up for next week. Whilst I'm delighted at others doing this I've no idea whatsoever how they're going to get round the legalities of food hygiene when so much raw and uncooked food is coming from so many places including private homes. This is a crisis and a terrifying one.

Some of our schools point blank refused the voucher scheme due to the fact it was no guarantee the voucher would be spent to feed the child. It's too open to abuse..

It's vouchers.

@CherryCocktails

Some of our schools point blank refused the voucher scheme due to the fact it was no guarantee the voucher would be spent to feed the child. It's too open to abuse..

Oh well. Better cancel the whole campaign then. Thanks for enlightening us.

Probably best stop giving adults money too. It's open to abuse.

One of our local schools did hampers instead of money/vouchers.
Ds volunteered again for delivering so must be doing same again.

Honestly if you can't trust parents to spend a good voucher on food for their children should they really be allowed to have unsupervised care for them, what other abuse is going on?

So to prevent the minority abusing it, they will not use a voucher at all and therefore ensure no one gets it

Schools did reject the voucher scheme though 🤷‍♀️

They did hampers instead

I live in quite a deprived area and our local community centre cafe does free hot lunches during the school holidays. There are lots of different ways this could be achieved.

My local Academy is in a pretty deprived area.
We were given vouchers @£12.50 per child per week.
The attached letter from School said that it was to be spent on food for the child to replace the hot cooked food they would receive in School (ours has an old fashioned menu with lots of casseroles and custard) and not to be spent on alcohol, cigarettes or clothing.
I imagine most complied. It is certainly not a reason for Tories to reject it as the 'feckless poor would spend it on lager and cigs'.

@MagicalThinking that sounds more achievable and a great way to get the community involved.

A voucher scheme would be the cheapest option. It could also be tendered out to restaurants who might be willing to bid for guaranteed lunch income for a few weeks - obviously ony a covid time solution. The work could be clustered in more affluent areas so each restaurant caters for FSM children in a few different schools.

A voucher scheme to cafes/restaurants/community centres would be a much more realistic solution to get a child a hot meal during school holidays yes!

@CherryCocktails

Schools did reject the voucher scheme though 🤷‍♀️

As I posted on the other threads, many schools rejected Edenred’s online voucher system because it kept crashing due to the high numbers of school business managers trying to log on all at the same time, to order the vouchers for the families. Our SBM had to log on early on a Sunday morning to get all the families on the system.

Some schools just preferred not to do that and prepared hampers and delivered them themselves. With hindsight, that’s involved a lot more work for the school.