Aibu to not know why you wouldn't be able to feed your DC's breakfast?

[Bearlover16]

Daughters school has recently extended the 'paid' breakfast club to 'free' breakfast club due to an increase in the number of children going to school not having had any breakfast.

Are people really that much on the bread line that they cannot buy a loaf of bread or some cheap porridge oats for less than a quid?

I'm not well off by any means and I do donate to food banks when I can. I also ensure my dcs have had breakfast before leaving the house as I was always led to believe it's the most important meal of the day.

I had a fuck up with my carers the other week.

If I didn't have family I wouldn't

Sorry

If I didn't have family I wouldn't of been able to afford to buy the one specific cereal DD will actually eat.

I imagine it's very easy to not be able to give your kids breakfast.

It's disheartening, it's 2017 FFS.

1 in 4 children in the UK lives in poverty. That means not having enough money for food so yes, I think YABVU

sashh im so glad that you had a decent assessor and will be able to keep your benefits

I tend to agree with OP, there must be a very tiny minority of cases where a parents genuinely cannot afford to buy any food, and have no means of cooking or preparing any. A loaf of bread costs 50p to 75p, a pot of jam can be as little as 30p. That would do a basic breakfast for a week for a kid, and all you would need was a knife and a plate. Any family that are genuinely that poor would be entitled to free school dinners so would not be needing to provide a hot meal for their child.

I would suggest cases where families are neglecting their children by failing to provide them with food at home by making poor choices over what to spend their low amount of money on are more numerous (though still rare in most areas).

Children who don't want to eat first thing in the morning is a totally different thing and I see no reason why public money should be spent on them. Parents could give them a snack to eat at breaktime in this case.

Maybe in a very deprived area cases of real need are more common in most areas numbers who really need this kind of help must be tiny.

1 in 4 children in the UK lives in poverty. That means not having enough money for food so yes, I think

@MasterofKittens That isn't actually a true statement.

Whilst 1 in 4 children might be in poverty, you need to ask - what is poverty?

This survey sets the poverty line in the UK at 60 per cent of the median UK household income. In other words, if a household’s income is less than 60 per cent of this average, HBAI considers them to be living in poverty.

The tHBAI poverty line 2015, for a couple and a lone parent with two children, excluding housing costs. So they have this amount AFTER housing costs. is £1,261/month.

Most families in this definition of 'poverty' are not too poor to feed their children. They are in relative poverty, which is still shit - but it is no absolute poverty.

Well if I hadn't of had family help, I couldn't of afforded the five specific foods DD will actually eat or electric which is pretty essential with baby DS being on oxygen.

Should add I don't drink, smoke, own a 60 inch telly or even a goat

1 in 4 children in the UK lives in poverty. That means not having enough money for food

That is a misinterpretation of the statistics.

My ds is at nursery and has breakfast there. He has time to gave breakfast at home and is offered it but rarely eats much. When he gets to nursery he is keen to eat there.

I'm a bit similar tbh. The idea of breakfast first thing makes me feel a bit sick. Once I've been out in open air and done something I become hungry (this is not a fun way to be btw- expensive and inconvenient!)

This has nothing to do with it being free though. Many pps have given good reasons.

I wish there was a like button for the post a few down from justanotherpostonthepage. They have got it absolutely spot on.

Cornflakes and milk, buttered toast (with or without jam/marmalade/marmite) and hard boiled eggs are all cheap especially the caged hen ones

I call bullshit on most people who say they cannot afford to feed their kids breakfast

There will always be a minority who are genuine

The rest are just taking advantage

YABU.
i know a now retired primary teacher who used to bring in food for her students every single day.
Those students used to go through the school bins at lunchtime because they were not given breakfast at home or given a lunch for school.
this was abroad (in the EU) where there were/are no FCMs.

1 in 4 children live in RELATIVE poverty. Of those only a small minority will be going hungry. Relative poverty means they cannot afford the luxuries the rest of our society can, such as holidays etc. It is not the same as ABSOLUTE poverty 🤷‍♀️

Yes, there are plenty of parents taking the piss and no spenidng their money properly. BUt parents like that aren't going to suddenly give their children a decent breakfast if you take away the breakfast club. They will simply send their kid to school hungry, miserable, unable to learn and potentially disruptive.

So choose. A 6p bowl of cornflakes, or having your well fed, well parented child disrupted until lunchtume, when the kids who didn't get breakfast can finally eat.

It's not fair, life isn't fair, but it is even LESS fair for the children of shitty parents, so we should at least make sure they get fed.

Omg im a single mum of 2 dd i get just over £100 for all of us to.live on i also have to pay bedroom tax as well breakfast club has been a lifeline with me i eat every other day to make sure my kids dont but some weeks it hard i would love not to use breakfast club but it helps so so much

becotide this

There is plenty of evidence that shows that:

• children who have eaten breakfast concentrate better and therefore learn and behave better in school than those who haven't eaten in the morning
• some children - for a wide range of reasons - start the school day without having eaten or drunk anything for over 12 hours (despite wanting to)
• stigmatising children with any measure that demonstrates to their peers that they are poor can be damaging and very often leads to families not claiming the help they need
• all children do better in class, and school is a happier place, when there is better behaviour as a whole
• the cost of universal schemes is often far less than providing a means-tested scheme and administering the means-testing part (and breakfast provided on a school-wide scale is especially cheap).

Given all that, why on earth wouldn't we think that universal free breakfast is a good thing???

Anyone who holds a strong personal objection - such as feeling this is the state overstepping its role - is, I suppose, free to instruct their child not to participate. But you certainly can't make the argument on financial or welfare grounds.

Yes, some people are that skint. You might also consider that when Universal Credit is rolled out in full, a lot more people are going to be on the breadline because of the waiting time to claim, cuts in the benefits available, and sanctions handed out to claimants if they fail to comply with the smallest of conditions.

Firstly, yes there most definitely are families where this is a struggle.

Personally for us breakfast club is a childcare solution for us on occasion and paid (though only £1). Often they don't want to eat so early but often they eat a piece of fruit on the way and decide if they want to top up at school. It's breakfast club, I don't know why they wouldn't have breakfast there to be honest.

There are dcs living in homeless accommodation where they don't have fridges for milk or cookers or microwaves to heat porridge or any utensils, crockery, cutlery or fuel to heat anything.

Poverty is real and is in every town in the U.K.

There but for the grace of God go you. Dh took 60% paycut. I could not work. Dc did not go hungry, but i did.

Do not judge if you are in comfortable position, I'm superstitious and trust me, karma is an unforgiving bitch...and hunger is painful.

It's essential for children to have proper nutrition; sometimes it creates lasting problems.

I knew a single Mum with huge divorce settlement and big house.
She couldn't be arsed to get out of bed in the morning so her 8 year old would dress himself and come round to our house to wait for the school bus with my kids. His breakfast was a small plastic bag of dry cereal in his pocket.

He also stood and watched fascinated while I cooked a meal.....his usual dinner was frozen chicken nuggets.

You just don't know what goes on in some households.

If you can't understand why people can't afford breakfast why do you donate to food banks? Surely you donate because you understand people can legitimately not afford food? Or is breakfast so cheap surely it can always be paid for?

Some parents don't even get up with their kids in the morning. I know of several children who get themselves ready(ish) and out, who are under 8 (one is 6). We had a child turn up in school uniform on the top and pyjama trousers, because he'd wet his school trousers and his parents were still in bed. Welfare form was duly submitted.

It's shit for the kids, but apparently not illegal, so schools often fill the gap left by inept, or ill parents.

What a snidey post.

Yes, as a teacher I can say there are children living in that level of poverty. More than you think.

There are also children who have working parents, children who prefer breakfast club and children of disabled parents who find it easier.

Free breakfast club exists in Wales in primary schools and it's bloody brilliant. It also raises attendance and therefore attainment.

Some of the comments on here are horrible :(

Some families really are that poor. I've worked in schools where the kids vests don't even look good enough to be dusters.