to think charities should not feed children

[moogster1a]

Listening to a discussion on radio 5 about how so many children go hungry because their parents cannot afford to feed them or their lives are so chaotic they just don't think to feed them.
benefit money is enough to feed a family. If the parents lives are so cocked up that they have better priorities than feeding their own children, then the children should not be with them.
I don't understand why if the charities concerned know the children are basically starving, then why SS aren't taking the children in hand.
I understand some people have MH issues, but again, should they really be in charge of their children's basic requirements if they can't meet them?
The discussion has mentioned a few times how some parents have drug and or alcohol issues. In that case, either get straightened out and spend that money on food, or the children go into care.

not going to end well.

You have a point. If caring for their basic needs is too much for the parent, it's like a band aid on an amputated limb to allow a charity to feed them sporadically. The child is at risk of deep seated neglect.

But a lot of food banks help good families who are just struggling to balance the basic cash flow, that doesn't make them bad parents or necessarily raising unhappy children.

I agree, care is fantastic for children, they love it, and parents who take drugs or have MH problems don't deserve help. Put them in a pile and burn them is what I say.

So the children should starve until they can be moved somewhere?

Thing is though sadly the children get 'punished' for something they have no control over.

Children going into care means being separated from siblings, wider family etc. I'd far prefer see help in the community available than families being split up. I see your point of view but life isn't as simple as that.

That would just increase the suffering of the children though. Yes things need to be done to resolve the situation but in the short term children can't starve

But there's no reason for them to be starving. Benefit money is basically the same for people in similar situations. If the money is going on other things then the children ultimately cannot be trusted in the care of the parents.

Well if benefit money is sufficient for the majority, then something is going very wrong with the people who reckon they literally can't afford to buy bread / porridge / potatoes / reduced price apples etc.

You mean someone like my friend Lee? On Jobseekers allowance and having to choose each month between paying for her rent, oil, water rates, phone and electricity bills or paying some of those and feeding and clothing herself and her child? As well as providing home necessities - cleaning/personal care products, replacing the cooker or the kettle when they break, buying bed linen etc etc.

Benefit money may be "basically the same for people in similar situations" but for those like Lee, who have a large shortfall in rent to make up out of the money which is supposed to be for food, bills, furniture and clothing it's impossible to pay for all the basic needs.

For you to suggest otherwise makes you either very ill informed or very unpleasant.

So you think the same for free school meals?

It may be a sticking plaster over a gaping wound, but I'd rather see kids being fed than going hungry.

YABU but you have a point. This is why a portion of benefit money should be paid in food vouchers that cannot be spent on anything else.

YABU

Taking children away from their parents is not an easy option and can be much more damaging to the child than their bad situation at home.

Not every person getting benefits has exactly the same available income for food, it is really dependent on what kind of housing you can get and an awful lot of luck, good and bad. The reality is that there are some very responsible parents who have to choose between food and heating, or travel to the hospital or getting the washing machine repaired or transport to work or all manner of things many just take for granted as being there.

I agree that it is wrong that it comes to charity to feed children, it shouldn't come to that but it is not all down to feckless parents.

Moogster..... Benefit money? Like child benefit?

"buying bed linen" Don't know if there's a specific benefit for that but I buy new roughly every 5 years or so, about £20 a set from tesco value. £4 a year must really eat into the food budget.

Because there are an abundance of places in homes and with foster parents for all these kids who need to be removed from their families. Clearly. And an abundance of social workers with empty caseloads to work with these families on creating a better environment for their kids.

YABU. Obviously.

'I don't understand why if the charities concerned know the children are basically starving, then why SS aren't taking the children in hand.'

have you any idea of the scale of the problem OP? Do you really think that if social services interevened in every case where children were hungry that they would not be even more over-stretched than they already are?

Yes, there are neglectful parents with a whole myriad of problems, despair, depression, addiction that are caused by the grinding poverty that they exist in. Then there are naice middle class parents who simply cannot afford to feed their children because they have lost their employment, cant keep up mortgage repayments, or been in an accident or have a disabled child, who have to go to food banks in order to survive. If you would like to devise a system of judging which parents can keep their children that does not simply take away children from their parents because they are poor then I'm all ears.

Quite - I think any feckless family who spent all their benefits on bad drugs and union jacks and plasma tellies would soon get their act together once a few of their kids had died, and find better ways to budget.

YABU.

I could go into how stupid you sound.

But I'm not going to just one piece of advice, go back to your copy of the daily fail

moogster what benefits do you get?

Great idea, Outraged. Let's make a public example of all those horrible poor people, let's humiliate them and treat them as if they're second class citizens, lets treat them as if they can't be trusted when in reality they just don't have enough money to live on.

While you're at it would you like to squeeze them out of many areas of the rented property market so they can only afford to live in the scummy areas? Oh. No, wait. Don't bother, that's already being done.

Of course charities should not have to feed children yanbu there
but please dont rant about benefits and feeding children there is a bigger picture here maybe look into child poverty a bit more then you will understand

what about working families that struggle should their children be put in care also or just the ones on benefits. I am relieved that this is being highlighted and of course sad but children in this country go hungry and school holidays are the worst for these kids,