to think £40 per week for food isn't too bad?

[EmmaGrundyForPM]

I was reading a news article about children in care and how care homes are managed. The staff are obviously very overworked and underpaid.

However one of the "issues" raised by a staff member was that they are only given £40 per week per child to feed them. I'm struggling to understand why this is seen as too little. We are a family of 4 adults and spend around £130 per week which also includes toiletIves, household items. pet food etc as well as food. And I think we eat pretty well.

The article seemed to say that the £40pw only had to cover food, not washing powder, loo roll etc. And presumably children in care get free school.meals.

I just felt the other salient points in the article were undermined by the complaint about £40pw per child,

Aibu to think that it's not an unreasonable
amount?

YABU and discriminating too

£40 a week is the recognised allowed food budget for one person via social services/ court appointee where I work. It's fine.

I voted YABU only because newspaper headline amounts are invariably wrong as they do not tell the whole story.
With the £40/wk per child going to a home for children to feed them is most probably not the cost of the food alone. It’s probably the budget for everything meal associated and the overhead so would have to cover:

• food
• wages of kitchen cook and cleaning staff
• kitchen supplies, maintenance and repairs- dish breakage, annual hood cleaning, pest control.
• any admin or direct management staff wages, such as the person who negotiate and buys the food in, inspects food/kitchens, hires kitchen staff, calls in maintenance contractors, etc.
• any liability insurance, background check costs.

Probably only £5-10/wk per kid is actually spent on food.

I’m confused how that is too little -we spend £200 a month on a family of three and two cats including cleaning products, cat food, basic toiletries (shampoo, cond, toothpaste, deo) and a bit of wine and beer. We are a family on a six figure salary so it’s not through absolute necessity but I find that with shopping at Lidl, meal planning and cooking from scratch it’s quite easy to stay in budget.

I understand cooking from scratch etc is harder in a care setting but £40 a week still seems fine for a child. My 6ft husband used to cycle 26 miles a day and we still fed him well on that budget.

I think what a person spends on food depends on their own individual circumstances. I believe that is unreasonable not to take these into account.

I'm my own family, my sister is highly allergic to all fruits, (some) vetetables, seasonings, animals, eggs, nuts, etc, and most of the processed "convienence" foods would kill her. She's not the best at cooking from scratch, although I love it, but then again, she and her husband work full time and have a small child, whereas my job has the flexibility to work from home and I have no children, nor allergies to consider.

Luckily her child did not inherit any of her allergies, however, like most children, he can be fussy when it comes to food, which is quite normal, and not at all on the same scale as a child who has an autistic spectrum disorder, who MUST have a regular set diet, to ensure that they take ina nutrition, as any deviance, or change of any type can have them so emotionally distributed that they refuse to war what little they once did.

Be thankful that you can spend so little on your shopping, and please for the love, stop judging those who can't for whatever reason... It's really none of your business...

Well, on the one hand I don’t spend £40 a week on food for each of my DC, so it’s clearly possible to spend far less than that and eat well.

However this is assuming a well-managed situation. I meal plan, they eat the same thing, I can shop around, bulk buy, adjust for offers etc. In a badly-managed place I’d assume there’s a lot more ad hoc stuff going on; day to day shopping rather than in bulk, changing placements at short notice, young people who are possibly quite hard work and demanding wanting junk food or takeaways.

Yes in an ideal world they’d all sit round a table at 5.30 for shepherd’s pie followed by crumble and custard and I’m sure there are some homes that operate like this but I really think it’s more a case of doing the best they can when short staffed and with very difficult children to deal with. Imagine if someone different was cooking every night, you didn’t know what skills they had or what they liked to cook, you didn’t know who was going to be there to eat it or what might happen if they didn’t like it...they don’t live in an ideal world, they live in the real world and that comes with a massive amount of issues.

Cross posted. If @PlanDeRaccordement is correct (and wouldn’t be surprised given the track record some of these papers have for deviating from truth) then I can imagine that’s terribly, terribly hard to make work.

Thanks @PlanDeRaccordement, useful post. Changed my view.

Saw your thread title and thought you meant for a family. £40 per head is more than many families can afford.

Having worked in the public sector all my adult life I'd say @PlanDeRaccordement has it right. £40 per week per child (wholesale not retail, presumably if they're catering for lots of children) is generous, so there is zero chance that all of that is being spent on actual food.

The article certainly didn't imply that the £40 includes overheads, etc.

A source who works at one care home run by Sherico Care Services was critical of management at the firm’s children’s homes. He said staff were given just £40 a child to do a week’s worth of food shopping. “That is crazy, and makes it challenging for us to manage that. You have to find ways to make pounds stretch, that’s £40 for breakfast, lunch and dinner every day for a week,” the staff member said.

Though, yeah, if the article is mis-reporting as suggested by a PP then it's not at all generous.

I worked in a childrens home there was no chef, shoppers or cleaners, we did everything . I always described it as like being at home but with paper work. I cant quite remember what the weekly food budget was but the boys I worked with didn't go to school so no school lunches, the food bill also paid for staff food as well, we were meant to eat with the children round the table when possible, which we did 3 times a day most of the time. They also were meant to either get a takeaway or go out for a meal once a week, we would pay for our own. I worked with teenage boys we did a meal plan every week and they would pick what they wanted, we would go shopping and they would often come with us. They were also always meant to have a roast on sunday and a fry up at least once a week.

We spend that for two of us.

Does that include school meals?

There are very few group homes around, it is more beneficial for young people to live in homes of either 1,2 or 3 children in as similar to a 'normal' home environment as possible. So there is no mass catering. The homes are staffed 24hrs a day by at least 2 staff working in shifts.

This is perfectly adequate. I used to work in a residential care home for children. We had 3 kids and used to spend approximately £100 - £120 per week on the shopping, in Aldi/Lidl. This included snacks and any household items that were needed that week; bin bags, washing up liquid, toiletries etc. There were no cooks (we operated as a family home; just as the mum or dad of the family would cook, so did the support workers cook for the other staff and children and we all sat down together to eat) nor did it cover kitchen maintenance, breakages etc as someone above has said. That would come out of petty cash for smaller breakages or we would request money for larger kitchen repairs or breakages ie to appliances.

Depending on how many kids there are in a home, £40 per week per child could be £120-160 per week for 3-4 kids for the grocery budget. Not sure what's wrong with that.

£40 is not just the cost of the food. Are you including the cost of a cook's wages, fuel, cooking equipment and maintenance in your own calculations?

Thank you @CoffeeCoimmesseur for quoting the article.

As stated by the source, the £40 is to cover all meals. Not the staff wages etc just the food.

Children in care do not get free school meals, they do get pupil premium. It dosent say weather this is bulk buying large family type meals or if each child has own diet/meals, which does happen at certain childrens homes

I’ve worked with the care system, it covers everything not just food.

We spend £40 for two of us, so I would think £40 per child would be easy, even with about £8 of that going on a takeaway per week.

That might have to include nappies, formula or even overheads as suggested above. It is only £1.90 per meal. I read that primary schools get 2.30 ish per meal per pupil and that would include bulk buying discounts that wouldn’t be available to a small care home. I also imagine they’d have more children with complex dietary needs, need to provide a certain amount of nutrition, the odd meal out, treats etc within that budget.

Well £40 a week is only £5.71 a day. That’s not actually a lot! There maybe children within the environment who have special diet needs, ie gluten free, or lactose free. That will push the cost of their meals up considerably. They may also be limited on where they get their food from, if they don’t have a proper chef/cook they maybe forced to buy from a supplier who sends frozen food to be reheated on the premises, only able to order staples like bread/milk/eggs/fruit from one specific supplier meaning unlike many families they can’t shop around or change if prices go up.

I’d be VERY surprised if children’s home have a proper cook it will be cheaper for the council to buy in special oven that reheats food as anyone can be trained to use them. A person hired to use these ovens only needs to be paid minimum wage and would only need to work 4 hours or so a proper chef/cook will want far more than minimum wage.

Could you buy a ready meal, breakfast and lunch while hitting your nutritional values for £5.71 a day?

If someone whose job it is to look after a child/children can't feed them a decent diet on a £40 ppw budget, then they're not capable of doing the job they're being paid to do.

It should be well within the capability of any adult, SNs excepted of course.

Could you buy a ready meal, breakfast and lunch while hitting your nutritional values for £5.71 a day?

Yes I really think I could.
Weetabix with milk and an apple is a perfectly nutritious breakfast. 12 weetabix is £2. 4 pints of milk is £1 and 6 apples is £1.50. So breakfast is 75p per day.

And if you bought in bulk, the price per day would be even less (e.g. buy a 48 pack of weetabix between multiple children)

I dont think £40 a week is an unreasonable amount per head. I take your point about lactose/gluten intolerance pushing the prices up, although those products are also available on prescription arent they?