Free school meal vouchers - ideas please for how to spend them?

[KombuchaHauntsYourBurps]

DS is at a specialist school that doesn't have a kitchen, and we have just been told that I'm going to get vouchers in lieu of the FSM he would get in a mainstream school.

But... The vouchers will come once a term and have to be spent all in one go - you can't just spend part of one. The LA have said that they can and do check what they are being spent on and that it must be foods for the child's packed lunches. I'm also owed for last term due to it taking a while to sort out when DS moved schools, so the first voucher is for nearly £200.

I can only spend them in certain supermarkets that aren't the one I usually go to - I'm taking the first voucher to the Big Tesco and need to spend the whole sum at once on packed lunch food. We don't have a big fridge or any freezer space (we freeze a lot of fruit and soups etc so it's always rammed). In fact the kitchen itself is pretty small! So it's got to be ambient stuff, but nothing too bulky. Oh and DS doesn't eat meat or fish, or anything even slightly spicy/curry flavoured, anything cheesy (other than plain cheese which he does like) and obviously the school is nut-free. We eat mostly home cooked food, lots of pulses, grains, pasta, fruit and veg, home made cake, that sort of thing, and generally try to avoid UPFs (but I'm not super strict about that). His school lunches are usually either a cream cheese sandwich/slice of homemade fruit cake/tub of chopped tomatoes and cucumber/packet of snackajacks or a flask of homemade soup/bread roll/slice of cake.

I'm thinking to bulk buy decent cereal bars (the ones made with just fruit and oats) and snackajacks but what else?? Ideas very welcome as I'm a bit stumped on how to do this, ideally I'd just spend the voucher on a massive shop to last a fortnight, stocking up on things like washing powder etc, and then just buy the lunch stuff as I go along but apparently that's not allowed 😬

Are you sure it’s not just sent once a term but you can spend it in however many chunks you wish until it runs out? I’ve never heard anyone say a whole terms worth of lunch vouchers would need to be spent in one transaction. It’s not logical.

You normally just choose which supermarket you want and you get a standard gift voucher for that supermarket - so you can spend as much or as little as you want at a time.

Nope, the vouchers have to be spent in one go. It's there in the T&Cs of the voucher.

That would be super but it's not how my LA do it. I get these codes that I have to redeem online to swap for a voucher, with a list of 5 supermarkets to choose from (all of which are 12 miles or more away from home 😂). And you have to spend it all at once.

Thats stupid... of course you don't buy packed lunch stuff once a term!!!!

Anyway... can it be stuff that might be lunch food, or will they check what he's eating?

So pasta, tinned veg, cheese with decent shelf life, flour and cake ingredients, dried fruit, apples, stuff for pasta sauces...

If flasks of hot food are an option how about pasta and pasta sauces?

Does this not just mean you need to exchange the full value of then code ie the amount from the LA in place for the FSM in exchange for the supermarket voucher/ gift card and once it’s been exchanged you can spent it how you want?

I agree it's very silly but I'm just trying not to be ungrateful or picky about it as the vouchers are obviously going to be a big help, if I can work out how to make good use of them!

That's how I read it - you have to exchange the full value of the code in one go - i.e. you can't choose to spend half at Sainsburys and half at Tesco

I don’t think it will be logistically possible for someone to check the contents of his packed lunch against your shopping receipts. So I agree with a PP; buy store cupboard staples that you will use.

If you’re worried, you could always claim that you were going to give him pasta etc for lunch but he refused to eat it.

Trying to rein in my "well how completely ridiculous" feelings.

If you usually make fruitcake, you could buy dried fruits and flour and sugar as a starting point, and as much butter as you can face storing in the fridge. Maybe bread flour and yeast as well if you ever make your own bread? Could add jam in if you ever make or use jam (as it could be for a Victoria sponge). Oats and golden syrup could be used for flapjack but also in other things if you don't actually want to use them for lunch. Tinned fruits in juice might be another option that wouldn't go off?

Re kitchen space, if there's any space anywhere you could buy a plastic box and fill it up with that.

Could you ask about using the last term voucher for non-lunch stuff as obviously you have already bought the lunch stuff for last term (and therefore have additional non lunch spending you were unable to incur)?

OH! Oh maybe you're both right and I'm a fool for not understanding it..?

Although even if you're both right, the nearest supermarket where I can spend them is still a 24 mile round trip so little and often isn't going to be very practical!

A couple of big blocks of cheese
A couple of big blocks of fruit cake
Pepperoni sticks
Cereal bars with fruit
A couple large tubs of spread
Tins of pineapple and peaches you could open and make him a fruit salad.
Ingredients for cake like flour, sugar, eggs dried fruit like sultanas.
Drinks little cartons or bottles.
Tins of salmon/tuna
Ingredients for Bolognese you could send him in some in a vacuum flask.
Vegetables for homemade soup send in a vacuum flask.
Tin of baked beans with sausages in flask.
Fruit
Cream crackers

Oh great ideas thanks!

I can't see how they could see what you've spent the voucher on? Is it just like a gift voucher?

If it turns out to be a gift voucher, you might find you can get relatively cheap deliveries from some supermarkets, if you can spend it on online shopping. Asda's slots start at £1.50 (but does vary massively depending on the timings) and if that saved you a 24 mile round trip it might well be cheaper than either the bus fare or the petrol? And might make it easier to use. It has a £40 minimum spend but you could probably meet that with a few of week's worth of dry goods, a week of properly fresh stuff and a couple of weeks worth of long lasting fridge items.

I used to issue these in a previous job. Whilst they had to be spent on food, it didn’t need to be just lunch stuff. So you couldn’t buy a £100 trampoline but you could by pasta/cereal/rice etc. Never heard of it all being spent in one go BUT I can understand how that can work as the school can’t give change. Some vouchers would come as £10 at a go, or as a card that can be used intermittently but some were one voucher for the amount and thats it.

Asda is the only supermarket that I can spend it online with so I'll have a go at filling a virtual trolley and see what they have, thanks for the suggestion 🙂

No idea but the email was pretty clear that they had the ability to see how they were spent. The vouchers come via some company called BlackHawk Network - I don't get sent the voucher directly, I get emailed a code that I then have to exchange for a special digital voucher? It all seems very overcomplicated tbh 😂 but I assume somebody somewhere is making money out of it and that's whats important after all

I think that would mean they can check your getting food not fags, booze or a PlayStation. They won't actually be cross-referenceing what your kid brings in his lunch box.

Just looked at the Select website

www.select-your-reward.co.uk/Faqs

www.select-your-reward.co.uk/HowItWorks

It really does look like you have to redeem the full amount in one go, ie buy a gift card for the shop you want to use. But then you will have just a store giftcard and will be able to spend that however you like.

So you get a Black hawk code, go to the Select website, put in your code to 'redeem' it, that gives you a pot of say £200 to spend on the select website. You choose what store you want a voucher for, and 'spend' all of your £200 on a Tesco voucher. You then get sent a Tesco voucher which will be subject to Tesco rules for how it is used. You will be able to spend it in as many transactions as you like and if they accept vouchers online then it will be accepted.

And actually, looking at the 'how it works' guide although you have to redeem it all in one go, you can split it across several vouchers. So if your code is worth £200: you can buy £100 of Tesco and £100 of Aldi vouchers, you just have to choose the full £200 worth of vouchers 8n one transaction.

The gift card idea seems like a solution.

The way my SEN kiddos vouchers work is I get them weekly and they expire weekly. I don't have to spend them all at once but I do have to select which supermarket and spend in the same shop. As they expire weekly I spend the whole thing or I'd loose it. The thing that riles me is mine are not redeemable online meaning I have to take 3 children one of which is significantly challenging in supermarket environments and another just a baby to get the food. It's so bad half the time I don't use them as it's just not possible to get to a shop if I can't find someone to watch the kids/do the shop for me.

I do a big monthly shop and get it delivered. I recommend things like long life milk. Pasta and sauces. Cheese does keep well. Butter. Raisons. Jars of olives. Tinned fruits tinned sweetcorn. Dried fruits. Tinned potatoes (pasta salad). Mayo and other sauces. (you could send a cold portion of anything you have for dinner for lunch ffs so don't feel restricted to lunchbox items!!). Won't last a term but yoghurts last a good while, as do many cheeses. Apples.

They might check you spent it on lunch food but will they come to your house to check you don't have a chest freezer for all the batch cooking and freezing the terms cooked lunches you can claim you do?

Arg that's even more annoying, it's almost like they'd rather you didn't spend them 😬 At least I can spend mine online, even if it is only with Asda...!

I think I was mistaken at first, and everyone who has suggested that the "spend in one go" thing refers to spending the code in one go was correct, but that the vouchers will just be like any other gift voucher. It really wasn't very clear from the email and LA website page though, plus the example voucher they sent says in capitals "THE FULL VALUE CAN ONLY BE REDEEMED ONCE" which I thought was also saying it could only be used, well, once!