To ask why there is such food poverty.

[Helendee]

Please no flaming as I genuinely am seeking answers as to why so many children are going to school hungry these days.
This is not a critical or inflammatory post, I just want to know what’s gone wrong.
Obviously many of us are struggling financially because of Covid but food poverty was a huge problem before that.
Is it that benefit levels are too low to adequately feed our children?
What can we do to ameliorate the situation?

@picklecustard

I think it’s easy to look from a place of privilege and imagine what you’d do ‘in their shoes’ and how you’d be able to budget and make all these cheap yet nutritional meals from scratch and just plan more carefully and prioritise the right things, learn new skills and find work doing whatever you could. But the reality is a lot different and many people are genuinely trapped in hopeless situations.

I recommend Sendhil Mullainathan's book Scarity: Why Having Too Little Means Too Much. He talks about how scarcity - of money and of time affects how you think and how you end up only able to firefight and think of the immediate situation rather than being able to plan ahead. It uses all of your mental bandwidth. If you can't see it in terms of poverty, see it terms of being very busy and starting to drop the ball on various things.

www.goodreads.com/book/show/17286670-scarcity

With mass unemployment looming, there for the grace of God go I...

A lot of people are going to find this. This winter is going to be bad with the looming job losses.

I wish they had spent the £12b from the world class test and trace system which is only world class in that it doesn't work on combatting poverty. The gap is getting bigger and that is bad for everyone, it weakens the structure of our society.

Also recommend The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett.

www.goodreads.com/book/show/6304389-the-spirit-level

No one is saying that there can't be a difference in wealth, but the gap is so big now and people are struggling to live whilst working. Most people on benefits are working, it's topping up poor wages. Back in the 1950s/60s the gap between the highest paid and the lowest was much smaller (think more like ten times lowest wages rather than thousands of times higher).

@FatGirlShrinking
I couldn't walk 45 minutes with several heavy bags of shopping and if I was on a small food budget of say £30 a week the bus would take up 10% of that budget.

When we didn't have a car and we had to catch a bus to the supermarket, I used a trolley in order to get bags of shopping. a lot of my family laughed at me, cause it was what our parents used to carry shopping in back in the day, but needs must. there is usually a way, we just get so caught up in problems, we can't see the woods for the trees.

@Patricia I'm not judging, it's merely an observation. It's incredibly frustrating though to see children not being adequately fed because the parents often make poor choices. I'm not saying this is the only factor in food poverty, but in my setting it is the main one.

The benefits system was much better in the late seventies and the eighties. I knew a lot of people who rented privately but their rent was paid through housing benefit , myself included for short periods. A girl I knew got pregnant to get a council house. Someone else decided they wouldn’t bother working as they could live on the ‘social’. I’m not suggesting this was the majority, but it happened. We seemed to have moved to the other extreme now where young people can’t ever buy a flat , rents are very high and no one on minimum wage can afford to live. Jobs are harder to get and redundancy is very common. Despite the endless building of rabbit hutches on green space there isn’t enough housing.
Doctors surgeries are impossible places where you can’t get to see a doctor for weeks and then are fobbed off with drugs or stuff printed out because the doctor doesn’t have the time to properly listen and doesn’t know you. They also just don’t seem to have the knowledge anymore.

Schools are run according to statistics not human connection and need. Kids are all getting degrees which are not what they were as the teaching just isn’t there and the jobs don’t exist anyway.

I just can’t see anything good about the society we live in now. It’s all about gadgets, greed and big tellies. Looking after your family first, saving for things rather than thinking you have a right to then and being happy with what you have is an increasingly rare thing. The breakdown of community and advertising are partly to blame but it’s more than that.

It closed in 2010, it is a dreadful shame
Because it was a very expensive scheme that didn't bring the changes that were hoped for.

Education is only part of the issue. You can teach people how to cook but if they still can't be bothered and prefer to order a take away because it taste better and is no hassle, it won't resolve the problem.

I have lived on benefits with kids and I managed fine to buy enough food. But i knew it wasn’t forever which makes a huge difference. I think it’s certainly possible to buy healthy nutritious food on benefits but it takes planning and discipline. It’s hard for anyone to make the right choices all the time and it’s horrible to be stuck in that way of life and thinking for a long period. But basically I do think benefits are enough for food.

Education is only part of the issue. You can teach people how to cook but if they still can't be bothered and prefer to order a take away because it taste better and is no hassle, it won't resolve the problem do people honestly think people on benefits just order takeaways all the time?! The odd takeaway is not unjustifiable because you receive UC. These children aren’t being taken to Peppa pig world or going to see Matilda in the west end. If a takeaway once a month is there’s parents way of “treating” them then so be it.

@Graphista

When it’s MOSTLY DOWN TO LUCK

I honestly wonder how many of the smug pps looking down their noses at those of us on benefits will cope if they end up on benefits themselves, which btw can happen to ANYONE (barring the very independently wealthy like Johnson, the royal family etc) all it could take is:

A Serious illness or disability - happening to you, your spouse, your child/ren

A Bereavement

A Job loss (covid and Brexit making this much more likely for many)

A Relationship breakdown

And you could be right in the same position as me!

When I had my very much planned and wanted dd I was:

happily married

securely housed

working in a well paid and secure job

healthy and fit.

Within 5 years I was

Divorced (he cheated)

Had narrowly avoided homelessness

Unemployed

Disabled (car accident not my fault numpty on his phone!)

Seriously mentally ill (combination of factors)

And though I didn’t know at the time as didn’t yet have a dx but dd has a disability too.

I’ve worked since I was 14, worked full time from 16 except when I was either on mat leave (3 months) or at uni which I did as a mature student and the 2nd time I was working part time too.

If you think it can’t happen to you THINK AGAIN!

But then maybe that’s why certain people try to convince themselves that those of us that are poor somehow deserve it, because they (falsely) think it means they’re protected!

With mass unemployment looming, there for the grace of God go I...

It was very interesting to see threads by newly redundant mners with no prior experience of the current benefits system. Including the OUTRAGE that they (valid claimants apparently compared to us non covid INvalid ones) were expected to use their savings! Apparently this was a reasonable expectation on “normal” claimants but was an unfair ask of them! A couple even went as far as to say they thought such rules should be “temporarily suspended” until the covid aspect was over! I SHIT YOU NOT! And I saw similar on other sm.

Yes, I know of other cases like yours when bad luck just seems to keep hitting an individual or family and it's hard to see how they could have avoided serious financial trouble unless they'd won the lottery or inherited money.

The teanage lad, buying his trainers. Yes it,s his money but how selfish. He expects his mum to buy yesterdays 5p rolls for his lunch (as she can,t afford full price.) and he goes and buys addidas.

@SummerWhisper

2010 and the start of Tory austerity. That's the sole reason. The Tories are lower than vermin.

Are you seriously trying to claim that there was no poverty prior to 2010? Don't be ridiculous. I can clearly remember neighbours kids knocking on my door asking for food because they were hungry and making them jam sandwiches, and sharing my own (small and cheap) dinner with my friend because she hadn't eaten for 2 days. And this was under a LABOUR government.

@Supersimkin2, please come back and add to your whispered assertion that 90% of children in care come from parents with an 1Q of less than 70.

You do realise that 1Q as a measure of intelligence was discredited years ago?
Putting that to one side, I would like to know more about how I can research adoption details and check the 1Q scores?

Or , are you actually whispering that thick people deserve to have their children removed and have no food?

Are you seriously trying to claim that there was no poverty prior to 2010? yep there was poverty but not as much! I don’t remember Safeway having a donation box to the food bank next to the tills- now this seems the norm and Rees Mogg thinks it’s fantastic

@WitchesGlove, contraception really has nothing to do with this issue and encouraging/enforcing it won't stop any cycle repeating itself. Because we live in an age when jobs are very insecure. Unless we revert to a one or two child enforced policy irrespective of parental means, you won't ever avoid the likelihood that people who have had children when they had a good income will struggle if that income suddenly disappears.

[quote MoonJelly]@WitchesGlove, contraception really has nothing to do with this issue and encouraging/enforcing it won't stop any cycle repeating itself. Because we live in an age when jobs are very insecure. Unless we revert to a one or two child enforced policy irrespective of parental means, you won't ever avoid the likelihood that people who have had children when they had a good income will struggle if that income suddenly disappears.[/quote]
No, but it will stop the people who never had/have the means to afford children from having them.

The majority of people I’ve ever known on benefits knew that they couldn’t afford children before they got pregnant.

I’m sure some people would support forced sterilisation and workhouses.

@Graphista

When it’s MOSTLY DOWN TO LUCK

I honestly wonder how many of the smug pps looking down their noses at those of us on benefits will cope if they end up on benefits themselves, which btw can happen to ANYONE (barring the very independently wealthy like Johnson, the royal family etc) all it could take is:

A Serious illness or disability - happening to you, your spouse, your child/ren

A Bereavement

A Job loss (covid and Brexit making this much more likely for many)

A Relationship breakdown

And you could be right in the same position as me!

When I had my very much planned and wanted dd I was:

happily married

securely housed

working in a well paid and secure job

healthy and fit.

Within 5 years I was

Divorced (he cheated)

Had narrowly avoided homelessness

Unemployed

Disabled (car accident not my fault numpty on his phone!)

Seriously mentally ill (combination of factors)

And though I didn’t know at the time as didn’t yet have a dx but dd has a disability too.

I’ve worked since I was 14, worked full time from 16 except when I was either on mat leave (3 months) or at uni which I did as a mature student and the 2nd time I was working part time too.

If you think it can’t happen to you THINK AGAIN!

But then maybe that’s why certain people try to convince themselves that those of us that are poor somehow deserve it, because they (falsely) think it means they’re protected!

With mass unemployment looming, there for the grace of God go I...

It was very interesting to see threads by newly redundant mners with no prior experience of the current benefits system. Including the OUTRAGE that they (valid claimants apparently compared to us non covid INvalid ones) were expected to use their savings! Apparently this was a reasonable expectation on “normal” claimants but was an unfair ask of them! A couple even went as far as to say they thought such rules should be “temporarily suspended” until the covid aspect was over! I SHIT YOU NOT! And I saw similar on other sm.

I have wondered this, I doubt there are many people who can say they are properly insulated from any of the above things happening to them and pushing them into poverty in the longer term. They may be able to weather in the short term by living on savings (for months), but could they weather it for years? That would take so much money. People don't want to think about it, it's easier to think it could only happen to someone else. These things can happen to anyone, at any time.

We have lost the safety net for everyone, by trying to stop the very, very few "scroungers". Certain media outlets push this simplistic narrative of benefits = scrounging and we don't think it through critically enough to realise that there are consequences to us all. If you lost your job, after paying in for years/decades, you would want an adequate safety net until you where able to find something else. You wouldn't want there to be no safety net (or an inadequate one) on the off-chance that stops a very small minority taking advantage.

Thank you so much for this thread OP - I am in the process of planning the opening of a FoodBank in my area, but with an emphasis on people making monetary donations rather than food ones, so that we can then do fresh, healthy shops for our applicant families which they can choose themselves from our priced up list of supermarket items. All the replies above will be really useful for us to consider in our planning, so thank you xx

No, but it will stop the people who never had/have the means to afford children from having them there will always be a section of society who can only earn minimum wage, who won’t inherit a house deposit, who will always need to supplement their income with UC, and we are going to say they can’t reproduce?

The blame lies squarely with Conservative Government. They have one rule form them and their friends and one rule for everyone else.

I really wish more people realised this. The government and wealthy media has done a fantastic job at getting the general public to blame the people at the bottom for being in poverty. Look at the current cabinet, most of them and their families are millionaires and billionaires. So many freebies and opportunities are afforded to them and their elite circle, but people are aghast at people on benefits buying fags and takeaways. Benefits have an eligibility criteria, it's not opt in or out. it's the absolute minimum that the not very generous government says you can live on. If you've never been entitled to benefits, lucky you.

Some positively Victorian attitudes on this thread, we seem to have returned to classifying the poor as "deserving" or "undeserving" Some posters clearly see themselves as having the moral authority to pronounce on which category people fall into, presumably by dint of their being well educated, homeowners, financially secure or whatever. (AKA "their betters")

And Dear God the benefits bingo "Big TV" "Sky Sports" "Smoking" "Drinking" "Holidays"

I have a full cupboard of pulses and spices and basics plus a well equipped kitchen and no fuel issues so could make very cheap tasty meals very easily, but that's simply not possible for many people and to hear people proposing these "simple" answers is like seeing Marie Antoinette playing at being a bloody milkmaid.

@OnlyFoolsnMothers

No, but it will stop the people who never had/have the means to afford children from having them there will always be a section of society who can only earn minimum wage, who won’t inherit a house deposit, who will always need to supplement their income with UC, and we are going to say they can’t reproduce?

Why can people ‘only’ ever earn minimum wage?

What’s to stop them studying/ gaining promotion/ building up a business?