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?

@timeforanewstart

To the poster who said they have always been better off working than on benefits , that is the point , you should always be better off working Benefits was designed for a short term gap not life Disability benefit is very differenf and could be funded better as many have no way of getting a job or of life changing etc Where as a single mum at home with young children will hopefully eventually be able to help

I think that was me. I know that's the point. It's how it should be. I wasn't complaining, merely replying to people who claimed the feckless poor unemployed have more income than them. I'm forever grateful for the welfare state we have, even if it is broken!

@Vaggiiemight yes some do
Know how to work the system and get more extras as well as maybe declare lower incomes etc, uc is making it more equal and harder to do , the waiting time is the issue but better than tax credits in lots of ways
The state pensions being claimed most have paid for them over the year its just the issue that no goverment has ever kept a pension pot
The biggest help would be more social / council housing as private renting is high and in some areas especially people will spend ao much of their income or benefits on it
Whereas a family living in low rent area or social housing will have more disposable income
Schools should teach basic budgeting and apr's etc more use than algebra which most won't use
People make comparisons with other countrys like norway but don't compare the taxes or the unemployment rate or amount of people etc , there is so much more to it

@TheFormerPorpentinaScamander but to be fair years back when my dh was working and i was sahm we barely qualified for much hellp my sil on full benefits wAs better off than us
She had all rent paid , no council tax to pay , fsm , free prescriptions for both kids and obviously her benefit money
Even when it came to child trust fund her kids where given £500 and ours £250
We had to pay full rent , full council tax and provide packed lunches , run a car so dh could get to work
They were out every weekend drinking whilst we rarely did anything and struggled to get by , if dh was of sick for a day then it would put us behind a month .
They def had more disposable income but benefits has been shaken up since then but it was frustrating as they chose the lifestyle at the time they could of got jobs but didn't and some days i didn't blame them

I think the benefit cap has a lot to answer for. What is the point in saying for example your family needs £500 to survive but because of the cap we will give you £450.

I don’t remember the exact amount the cap is set at, but someone (Dm friend) asked for help in explaining what her benefit letter said. I’m bilingual so I helped translate that. Ridiculous. Why not just say you are entitled to this amount because of the cap. Why do they need to rub it in? I understand if people ask to see the calculations then give them it. Until then don’t point out further how bad their situation is.

Absolutely sheepandcow let's be fair, most of us are a few months away from being in receipt of benefits. Feeding hungry children should be a priority for individuals and governments.
No child should be hungry. My mum remembers the pain of hunger. It shouldn't happen now for idealogical reasons.

@Hellomoonstar i believe cap is about £20000 more in london and thats tac free
So quite high really as a lot of people i know don't earn that especially when you consider they have to pay tax
The issue normally is the rent its maybe these that should of been capped years ago

Things have changed a lot since then @timeforanewstart.

@Hellomoonstar whenever I see that bit of my UC account I hear them saying "But we don't wanna give you that" like Chris Tarrant on who wants to be a millionaire!
The government are as good as admitting benefits aren't enough by the way its worded!

Jack Monroe is eloquent on this : cookingonabootstrap.com/2020/07/30/the-price-of-potatoes-and-the-value-of-compassion/

It's having enough money to compensate for mistakes or misfortune or lack of skills or not having enough money to do so that marks the difference
So that those who don't have cooking skills can spend more on instant unhealthy food? So they can make even more poor budgeting decisions?

Everyone can indeed find themselves going from a comfortable life to one of benefits having to tighten their belt to the maximum. Noone is denying that. The point is that the income families get is certainly enough to feed family healthily IF the right choices are made.

Posters have brought up the issue of opting for some luxuries over healthy meals because being in benefits is mentally tough. Again, nobody is disputing it, but noone should consider being in benefits a long term lifestyle. The more comfortable you make it, the more luxuries you can afford, the less likely you are to fight to get out of it.

Posters with experience of working in food banks are the ones pointing out that large proportion of people using them do so because they know they can rather as an ultimate necessity.

The issue is not family who rely on benefits temporarily, even for a few years, but those who become fully dependent on them for decades, bringing up kids who don't know any different to that lifestyle.

We need to encourage young women and men to settle with their lives before having children and only have as many as they can afford.

One thing is the area that you live in.
If you are in a poor part of a large city possibly lots locally are on fsm, possibly lots can walk minutes to school.
If you are in many other parts of the country, smaller sprawling town, countryside, attending school for your religion, etc getting to the school for you free lunch is probably too hard so large sums of money wasted due to lack of take up.
Not everywhere is London.

If life was so hard timeforanewstart why didn’t you work?

There is an awful lot of hand-wringing and whataboutery on this thread.
And a fair amount of abuse for posters who dare to disagree with the MN accepted wisdom of child poverty.
I also note that posters who have real-life experience of working with low-income families are ignored and/or shouted down by well-meaning posters who have their own reasons to buy into the narrative du jour.
I have got as far as page 10 and am in awe at the increasingly ridiculous reasons given to justify why parents don't feed their children.
No, it's not the children's fault, and as someone said, this is a separate issue to why they are not been fed.
We can't ignore hungry children but that doesn't mean we, have to accept the reasons why they are hungry.
The £74 a week much mentioned on this thread is irrelevant. Anyone with children will be in receipt of a lot more than £74.
Along with others on this thread, I have lived with very little, under the benefits level actually, and my children have never, ever, been anywhere near going hungry.
I know I will be called all sorts of names for this, but I honestly don't believe there are that many people in the UK suffering from the very specific sets of circumstances trotted out on here as justification for not feeding your children.
Most hungry children - does anyone actually know any personally, by the way? - are not hungry because of a lack of income, but because of life choices made by the parents.
Not a popular view, and one which will no doubt be shot down in a hail of name-calling.

Some of these comments are depressing & filled with baseless stereotypical tropes.

There are about 2 million children in receipt of Free School meals with another million in food poverty. 1 on 5 children live in poverty. Food banks have grown exponentially during the last decade of Tory cuts. A decade of cuts have negatively impacted schools, social services, children's services, disability allowance, carers allowance, housing and other benefits etc.

Somehow rather than looking at this, people want to share anecdotal evidence of their neighbours, sister, cousin, friend etc who are somehow part of the "undeserving" poor who are mismanaging their money.

Instead, be outraged by a decade of Tory austerity cuts & numerous multinationals that pay nothing in taxes to the UK.

You could argue though that food banks have grown in effect because they exist; if they weren't there people would have to find more from food by cutting costs elsewhere (I do accept for SOME that wouldn't be possible).

Clearly some families need foodbanks regularly, especially those where a benefit change leaves them without income for a period. Some families may need them as a one off, if an unexpected and urgent expense comes up.

But others - and again this won't be a popular view - have factored in the foodbank as a source of funds, like another benefit almost, allowing them to spend money elsewhere safe in the knowledge that foodbanks or similar services will keep them fed.

I see this with schemes in our local area. People getting shitty with volunteers and turning their noses up because the food available isn't to their liking (personal preference not dietary requirement, my kids won't eat that stuff kind of thing), or is yellow stickered, or they want more than is offered. One scheme has had to make it clear that people can only ask for a (large, 2-3 meals worth) bag of food twice a week, as prior to that some were asking daily. There is no way any family would actually NEED that amount of food daily.

It's like free school meals. I'm reminded of the family I knew where the mother considered FSM should feed her child for the day - whilst her and her husband ate 3 course dinners, she begrudged any food for the children. Even if that lady had access to a food bank back in those days, or increased benefits, I doubt it would have meant her children's access to food increased.

Yankee, the examples of poverty are equally anecdotal, are they not?

Most hungry children - does anyone actually know any personally, by the way? - are not hungry because of a lack of income, but because of life choices made by the parents evidence to this statement? Also what’s a lifestyle choice- choosing a deadbeat baby father? Having unsupportive parents who didn’t care if you got an education yourself?.

There are about 2 million children in receipt of Free School meals with another million in food poverty
Meeting the criteria for free school mean that you are in poverty. As said, my neighbour's kids are entitled to them as she claims full benefits but she gets almost £1,000 a month in child maintenance. This not counted for the purpose of fsm. She definitely can afford to feed them yet will be included in the statistics.

Healthy food being more expensive is a myth

It really isn't!

To make a spag Bol for 4 from scratch will cost 3.61 at Tesco (using the cheapest available ingredients and only the amount you need) so that's 90p per head.

30 chicken nuggets and 1.5kg oven chips will cost 2.40 and will do at least 2 meals for 4 so that comes to 30p a head.

And they are just very basic meals. To make consistently healthy and nutritious meals will always cost more than cheap frozen.

There are supermarkets that do grocery deliveries for 1.50
Only if you can afford the minimum spend in the first place. Are people really so stupid that they can't see this? .

30 chicken nuggets and 1.5kg oven chips will cost 2.40 and will do at least 2 meals for 4 so that comes to 30p a head

Are those 30 chicken nuggets like the infamous MN chicken? Because I don't know how else you can make them last 4 people for 2 meals...that's 3 and a bit nuggets each.

As for the pasta, not sure what you're basing the £3.61 on, I've just done a quick calculation and make it £3.24, but that would make at least 6 portions, and if you chucked in a tin of lentils or kidney beans (30-55p) that would definitely stretch to 8 portions or more.

It seems astonishing that, according to this thread, a woman could get unlimited income in form of a child maintenance agreement with a rich ex., yet still legally (let alone morally) claim welfare benefits.

A person without a single penny of private pension, and street homeless, will be banned from even the lowest amount the state deems necessary to sustain life, and banned even from asking to go on the council waiting list, as shown by the 90 year olds in the Bournemouth bus shelter. (And many, many more, never heard about)
Their problem was they had clung onto the remnants of life savings, which was their only security in absence of their own home or a pension. Of course no private landlord would consider them, and of course they couldn't get a mortgage for those last years of their life, and of course their petty savings wouldn't buy a house cash outright, so they lived in a bus shelter, he sleeping in his wheelchair and she on the bench. Great law making. But everyone hates old people and they all ought to be dead, (according to the Ageist hatred widespread in U.K.) so who cares?

Having more than a minor amount of savings is equal to being Bill Gates, in the deranged logic of those civil servants and politicians making laws ( all of whom are, themselves, expecting enormous golden pensions from the tax purse, and would routinely have trusts, investments, fully paid off mortgages on however many houses they wish to own in U.K. and overseas, and private medical insurance )

Meanwhile, the same weird rule makers with the same deranged logic have made rules that would say someone could have something like Melinda Gates' income, and claim full U.K state benefits and FSM ??? And Housing benefit towards the cost of a Mayfair rented mansion???

And have a footballer changing government policy and increasing the council tax for some who really do have the heat or eat choice, all so that her children can be fed during school holidays, at the expense of others? Every year, old people in U.K. die of hypothermia. But hey, who cares?

20mum that's appalling.

I think the elderly often get fucked over because they don't know how to play the system/ it doesn't occur to them to do so and also because cynically people think they'll be dead soon so it doesn't matter.

In addition to the maintenance 'loophole' it's also have money (7 figures) held in a family trust and still claim benefits/ FSM. Because it's not your personal money so it doesn't count. Even though you can request a payment from it at any time. Whilst legally it might be allowed, it doesn't seem morally fair.

It seems astonishing that, according to this thread, a woman could get unlimited income in form of a child maintenance agreement with a rich ex., yet still legally (let alone morally) claim welfare benefits.

Child Maintenance used to be included in calculations for benefits. But all too often the NRP would suddenly decide not to pay one month and then the RP had nothing to live on. I can imagine that an abusive ex could stop paying CM for long enough for a benefits claim to be processed, then start paying again so the claim stops. And repeat.
Plus the number of RPs getting these massive sums is rare. IIRC there are more parents getting sweet FA.

@grenlei, fat lot of use is that to someone who hasn't enough money for the meter.

There are supermarkets that do grocery deliveries for 1.50 jeeze talk about the Ocado elite/ aldi and Lidl don’t deliver

@katyppp

Child poverty data is not based on "anecdotal" evidence. Have a look at School Census data ( via DfE), Rowntree Foundation, The Trussel Trust etc for child poverty data. And yes, I do know students in poverty ( on my street, at my son's school etc). I've been a teacher for over 20 years & my husband a social worker for over a decade. What you "think" you're seeing with a family is only the tip of the iceberg of what is actually happening.

@grenlei
Food banks started with charitable organisations to make up for shortfalls for families in need. They need a referral to use a foodbank, people are not simply rocking up to get a snack. Again, the "anecdotal evidence" of "poor" people daring to ask for particular foods is miniscule in comparison with the increased numbers in poverty.