Free school meals

[mutznutz]

I was just thinking. With so many Government and Council cutbacks, isn't it about time they stopped providing free school meals that cost untold millions of pounds to provide?

I mean we're already given child benefit to help with the cost of our children. Also, as long as you're feeding your child properly at home, what's wrong with providing a fairly inexpensive packed lunch if you can't afford to buy them a hot one? (not that they are particularly 'hot' nowdays)

Plus, if parents cant afford to feed their children when they go to school...how do they manage at weekends and during the 13wks holidays they get per year?

Then there are the parents who earn just above the threshold and cannot afford school meals...their kids would have a packed lunch so why not everyone?

where iam we have a scheme where parents in receipt of benefits get £30 every year towards their childs school uniform, i think they should scrap that and let all children have free hot school meals itd probably cost a lot less , also only schools round here with over a certain percentage of children who qualify for the free meals actually serve them, the others are not allowed at the moment so only a few schools do them and the others are missing out even if parents wanted to pay for them!

It is really really hard when we are all feeling the squeeze, or strangle. It is so natural for us to look to the person next to us and think it's all right for them they are getting xyz. God, I do it, of course I do. School dinners and voilin classes and swimming that everyone else seems to get a voucher or discount for.

Then I kick myself and remember I got all that, and it saved me. Gave me a view of the ourside world, taught me life didn' begin and end at the end of the counil estate, and got my ass to university.

My mum and nan had a fair old role in it too but seriously, this stuff makes a massive difference. However we do need to address the ambition and work ethic of the whole nation to ensure these measures are able to free people and make them powerful in their own lives, not bound them up in a sense of entitlement from their earliest years.

jenroy29 I know that seems unfair but those £15 probably meant a great deal of scrimping and saving for the families in question. They will have done without a lot to raise it as will other families to raise the £85 but it is all relative. This may be the only "holiday" the child gets too.

maybe I am naive
can I ask wtf do the parents of these kids that people know of eat if they are giving their kids jam sandwiches etc for their tea?

My son has a packed lunch my daughter has dinners I still put a hot meal on the table every night regardless if she wants it or not because Im doing it for my son whos at home all day my son who has sandwiches and myself and my partner
I get there are people who cant cook but surely they eat?

My niece goes home to an empty house and has to make herself a sandwich (jam or otherwise) as both parents work. Free school meals would benefit her too. It's not only children on benefits who don't get a hot meal every night. There could be lots of reasons for it.

Durham in those circumstances a healthy meal could be left on a plate for her to put in the microwave. The money is presumably there to provide the food in this instance.

lurkey - I always serve up a hot meal for my DS's at dinner time (actually I lie over Chrsitmas we had assorted plates of crackers and cheese and sausage rolls, and crumpets and the like for a few days - well it was Christmas). However I frequently have been known to serve the DS's dinners up and find there's not enough for me (they're HUMONGUS eaters - especially with some meals) so I just have cheese on toast or something later.

I get away with this less if DS1 has cooked the dinner as he always serves some up for me as well just giving him and his brothers a bit less. (he's trying to get me to eat breakfast by making extra porridge as well - and then making a big song and dance about how it's gone to waste when he gets home from school).

I have to confess I do struggle to get my head around how someone could serve up a jam sandwich (or something along those lines) for dinner if they're getting free school meals (well even if they're not).

I know it's all relative I've done a benefit check bacause dps wages are crap and he only earns £55 per week more than what we would get from benefits.
This £55 is eaten by the things that we have to pay for because he works like prescriptions, dentist, eye tests, running a car and feeding the kids whilst they are at school.

This is the whole problem. There has to be proper means testing of everything. And there will always be someone on the threshold. It's life.

oh gawd - I x posted with Euphemia - I can assure you that I only smoke tobacco and am not not eating to make sure I get my next hit

so where is this money going to come from?
every thing is being cut(take a look at the DLA thread in the news) and you think the goverment can give free school dinners to "all " children!!!

Many people live in chaotic lives lurkeyishere. It's not until you experience some pockets of society through work or whatever, that you get a glimpse of how some people live.

Drugs, drink, abuse, violence [physical, mental, bullying, financial etc], crime, poverty, fear, illness...these are the major problems the people I have contact with face. They are often interwoven, and rarely in isolation.

Perhaps on a less bleak and more easily tackled front: sheer work load, working hours, transport issues, lack of organisation, lack of motivation, lack of energy. These things can often be easier to help with as some guidance and social networking can help lots.

Putting pockets of people in touch with each other through toddler groups can mean mum A [who works afternoons] gets paly with mum B [who doesn't], means child A can bob to Mum B's house after school to see child B. Therefore isn't home alone, therefore gets a snack and a drink and maybe stays for tea.
Mum A returns the favour when mum B has a dr's appointment and there you go a supportive community.

If your DCs are having a hot meal at lunchtime and the adults eat after the children's bedtime then a snacky supper isn't unreasonable actually.

I normally cook for the DCs in the evening because I got into the habit while the school kitchen was out of order so they'd only had sandwiches for lunch, but if they'd had a cooked school meal then I wouldn't see anything wrong with (say) wholemeal peanut butter sandwiches, a banana/carrot sticks and hot chocolate for a five year old's tea - that's what I used to have after school at that age. Jam sandwiches would be a step too far because of the near-total lack of nutritional value and high GI.

That is tough jenroy29 - I do feel for you. I used to get frustrated taking school trips and you would have wealthy kids moaning about the quality of the accommodation while other kids' families had saved for months to be able to provide the experience for the child, which we had provided at the lowest price we could. Life is very unfair such a lot of the time.

I did youth work a number of years in London - working in some 'deprived' areas. The Youth Leader there was fantastic and even though it wasn't required, she put baked potatoes or soup on for the children. I raggletaggle group of kids, who were for the most part very skinny, came in extremely hungry. They were mostly latchkey children - some as young as five - who would get in to a cold flat and whatever they wanted to make themselves to eat. Their parents were out at work from necessity. It really was like a scene from Dickens.

So for some children - if they lost that (free) school meals - they would have nothing hot or day. Please all of us - when we are pottering around Waitrose or stressing about schools - remember that there is child poverty IN OUR OWN COUNTRY. I do not care about the circumstances of their parents - there are children of junkies whose parents are barely there when they get up, let alone make sandwiches. The children are innocent and our children should be fed.

Or do you want to bring back workhouses?

I'm undecided on this on the one hand of course the children need to be fed on the other I can see how the provision of FSM might just lower the need for some parents to step up to the plate (or whatever cheesy phrase says what I'm trying to say)

Does anyone else think that 200 pounds after tax and housing is quite a bit?
How come all those impoverished children in Oz, NZ and ?USA manage without free school meals?

(for the record I've had an income well below that despite working and can't afford school dinners for my lot but don't currently qualify for FSM-at least I don't think so but apparently over 50% of my dcs school does!!)

I don't know the answer to that 2shoes. That's the pisser. Money. The stuff going on with DLA is plain scary, and I am in no way involved in it. To this day anyway. Who knows if/when I will need this stuff, and it's so scary because once it's gone, it's gone.

Treedelivery's post of 12:26 made me a bit tearful.
I cannot tell you how sick I am of all the sniping and whining about benefits that is de rigeur at the moment. This is a rich country. Maybe not as rich as some, not as rich as we would like it to be, but there is money slopping around in a way that is unimaginable in, say, Nairobi. Why is it alright to be so mean about FOOD for CHILDREN? We can afford this. Honestly, we can. Don't believe that this is somehow taking food out of your children's mouths or something. There is money. Not infinite amounts of money for everything, of course, but I think food for children should feature fairly high on the priorities list. Food is cheap. Children benefit hugely from good nutrition and don't have the wherewithal to provide from themselves. How is this not a no-brainer?

Life is hard when you work and bring up children and this poxy govt will make it harder, but bitching about the person next to you isn't going to make it easier.

I am disgusted with this attitude. And very very sad to see so much of it everywhere.

Actually I think all school dinners should be free. I also think children shouldn't pay for public transport, or decent shoes that fit, or books (perhaps through libraries ha ha ha ha ha remember those?) or glasses or music lessons. But in the meantime, please can we at least just FEED the POOREST? Isn't that the very fucking least?

(full disclosure: don't qualify for fsm, totally fucking broke)

Actually I've made my mind up free school meals should be provided for all children at state schools funded via a bankers bonus tax!

Lol @ Ilovecrisps - it would easily cover it and I am sure they wouldn't even notice!

£200 what? where?

And those children go without - quite simple.

FWIW - I've been working poor - on our knees at one point (I posted it about it a lot here on MN and got lots of lovely advice and support at the time), I've been "normal" working poor, I've been well enough off to not need any benefits, I'm on benefits now, and in September will (fingers crossed) be working poor again and once again not entitled to free school meals,

I know how lucky I am now to get help with the meals - but I won't begrudge those getting them in September when I no longer qualify. (and I ever post in a manner that suggests I do I hereby request for you to email MNHQ, link to this post and have me banned from MN for life )

but that's just it nutsandtangerines - it's not just FEEDING THE POOREST.

The poorest are having to pay for school meals as a base main meal because they are working poor. Thousands of families are only earning £10 - £30 above income support levels, yet pay for meals, transport to work and associated costs, lose out on council tax entitlements, help with school trips, etc, so are far far worse off than those on FSM's.

Out of interest has any calculated the extras that can be claimed re goinforits post? I've not thought about it much really until now

Tree delivery I dont think you actully realise I do live in a deprived area and both me and my partner work there too!! we see these people and their chidren every day
they come into my partners shop every day asking for tick because they dont get paid until Friday etc
If they are refused they still manage to find the money to pay for what they want same as they would if their kids wherent being fed at school for free anymore or maybe Im just being naive again

That is true goingforit (in fact many working poor have less money than those on benefits) - but is the answer to remove the FSM's from those on benefits? It's wrong that a poor WORKING family should struggle to provide 3 meals a day for their children......but that doesn't mean we have to penalise those on benefits for it.

The plight of the working poor is actually a separate issue from the benefits debate (although many working poor depend heavily on benefits still - just not FSM). We should be looking at why a family that is working for their living can't afford it - not pointing fingers at those on benefits who get help with it.