Am I the only person who thinks parents should feed their kids outside of school?

[HalloweenDoughnutAnyone]

Obviously it goes without saying I don't want any child to go hungry. But. Am I the only person who thinks parents should feed their kids outside of school?

Just that really.. it's free school dinners. Not free lunch all year round.

I don't understand why people think the tax payer should be paying even more? Maybe, if you can't afford to cover the basics (food and clothing) you should think twice before having a child?

Or should we extend free school dinners, to cover all the food a child needs inside and outside of school ?

I'm not tarring everyone with the same brush but I know people who rely on free school dinners. But have sky tv, expensive mobile contracts etc

Have you no compassion op?

Often seems like that's what people want.

That’s quite a leap from ‘I’m not keen on kids going hungry during a global pandemic.’

Worked with vulnerable families for 20 yrs. I've never met a family who prioritised sky tv and mobile contracts over feeding their children. I've met depressed, scared (mostly) women who struggle to budget on very low incomes. Half of the children living in poverty live in households where people work but due to the pandemic many of these zero hours contract jobs have gone. Many people have been forced on to worse contract terms and have lost the ability to control how much money they can earn in a month. Could you budget on that? Many have a phone as their only means of contact and this is necessary now more than ever to use for school work etc. If the only thing you could give your children by way of entertainment was tv would you not have one? It's way more complicated than you appear to understand. One things for sure, it is not the children's fault . Why can't MPs learn to stand on their own feet and stop taking handouts from the state through subsidised dining and work accommodation ?

The government stopped people from working so the government has to put something in place to make sure their children still eat.
Personally as a tax payer I’d rather pay for school meals than the consequences of malnutrition on children.
As a human being I just don’t want children to be starving full stop.

You seem to be suffering from a distinct lack of empathy, insight and imagination, OP. Are you ok?

You have said that you don't want any child to go hungry. For a multitude of reasons that you may not be able to imagine or understand, some parents are struggling to feed their children. So should we shrug our shoulders and console ourselves with the fact that those feckless parents should never have had the temerity to reproduce anyway, or should we, as a society, take action to help those vulnerable children who, through no fault of their own, are in need of a decent meal?

Maybe it's because I'm feeling a bit low today. But this thread upsets me. I'm so sad that people begrudge children a decent meal.

Yes, there some families that could afford to feed their children but don't. There are others that are too proud to ask for help (there's £,000 of unclaimed covid funding for lower income families in our area). Some reach out to charities or other support to help see them through tough times.

It's almost irrelevant why children are hungry. Let's just be compassionate neighbours and do what we can to see them fed. And then do what we can to change our society which allows childhood hunger to happen.

If only we sterilised these pesky poor people!

Obviously I am being sarcastic but I am so tired of these posts. Child are going hungry and the government can do something about it but don't. Because they are too busy having their own food subsidised and have given too much money to their mates.

There but for the grace of god and all that

I have kids. Four of them. When we had them, we never envisaged a pandemic. We never envisaged being unemployed as we both worked from a young age and have never been unemployed.

Six weeks ago my husband had a decent job. I am self employed and earned a decent amount.

He has now lost his job.

My income has dropped because no one needs my service at the moment. Because I'm new, I'm
Not entitled to help.

We now have to wait for universal credit to kick it and find some way if paying rent, running a car, feeding four children (two of which have birthdays in the next month) on £100 a week.

Stfu with your privileged attitude.

I don’t believe for a second that you’re thick enough to think everyone’s circumstances remain the exact same for the entirety of their adult lives.

So then you have to know that people don’t choose to have children when they can’t afford to clothe and feed them.

And that makes me question your intentions with this post? Because why make such a stupid, invalid point unless it was to goad people.

I'm sure the parents themselves agree with you. But in a pandemic things are different. Zero hours contract means you aren't going to get paid if your place of employment is closed, if you're self employed you can't work, or work less, if the kids are home because school has sent them, you can't work. Also, food prices have gone up, along with redundancies. I personally think everyone should read - actually read and perhaps study - A Christmas Carol and Oliver Twist in the very least - to understand how the Victorian working poor were reviled and how we sadly appear to be revisiting this view, this economist's view (Malthus) Dickens criticised that if only poor people worked harder they would have enough food.

Without food people will die and Scrooge says, 'Well they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population' - or something very similar. I don't necessarily think children will die (maybe they will) but I do think they won't be able to concentrate, their mental health will suffer and I do think they will be at a disadvantage for the rest of their lives if we, as a society, to not respond to need.

I'd much rather my taxes went to them than to the rich 1% of the country for God knows what. We are one of the largest economies in the world and we can't look after our poor? How are we any better than a corrupt developing nation?

Shame on ANYONE for supporting this government's decision.

@Tootletum

I agree with what I think you're trying to say, which is where does all this end? There isn't endless state money unless we just nationalise everything, get rid of private enterprise and become a communist country where everyone is equally poor, apart from the party top brass. Often seems like that's what people want.

It is quite funny though, that the greatest strides towards nationalisation (and the mountain of debt that goes with it) have come during a Conservative government.

I’d love to know what the Tories would have said if Labour has done everything the Tories have done.

All kids deserve to be fed, regardless of what their parents earn. It’s not their fault IF they’re parents have sky but don’t feed them!
I’d rather the money be spent on that than what MPs claim in expenses. They can afford their own fucking breakfast. And million to DUP? (Or was it more). They’ve got money when they want to use it! Feckers as they are

No one should have more children than they can afford to feed is an idealistic theory.

But life isn't that black and white. Parents circumstances change, now more drastically and widespread than ever before. Some parents are shite, some parents can't cope.

Are you saying we should let these children starve because of things outside their control?

I was born into poverty.. I did not choose to be cold. Dirty and hungry.
I was so vastly under weight as a child that at the age of 14 I could fit in age 6 child clothes.
I smelled of sweat and cigarette smoke and wore dirty clothes and was so hungry some days that I ate food from the bins.
No one did anything!
No teacher or doctor or dentist. No one!

It is the parent's responsibility I totally agree.
But when they can't or won't manage it is the responsibility of every other adult to step in and help.
To not provide a meal to a underprivileged child just because they don't want to take the responsibility of doing so, is the saddest , crappiest thing .
I can't believe people on over 80k plus expenses voted against this .
It breaks my heart that people who have never experienced real poverty and hardship, either won't or refuse to except it exists!

You know OP, in an ideal world, all parents have enough money to feed their children themselves. And no one is ill, or gets made redundant and every child is planned and costed and people aren't on reduced wages because of Covid 19. And everyone has had a lovely, comfortable childhood straight out of an Enid Blyton book and grows up without any trauma or mental health issues or maladaptive coping mechanisms through the medium of drugs or alcohol. And they've all had brilliant role model parents who they can learn from and imitate when they have children of their own. And housing prices aren't extortionate and there hasn't been 10 years of austerity and whole families don't end up living in B&Bs and landlords don't screw you over.

It is not true that everyone struggling waste their money on Sky TV and cigarettes and have 10 children by 10 fathers for the sole purpose of pissing off Middle England.
Similarly, not everyone struggling to feed their children is a teetotal saint, whose never made a poor decision and already work for jobs to provide for their children and dependant parents.

But, at either extreme and everywhere in between, children are going hungry and that is what matters. Whether the parents are doing their absolute best but have the odds so heavily stacked against them that they just can't manage or whether they're a daily mail caricature of feckless parents, it is not the fault of the child.

I know of a couple of people who were entitled to free school dinners and received the supermarket vouchers, £15 per week per child and were selling them at a reduced rate, one of them was advertising them on fb 🙄
Absolutely maddening.
The sad reality is that if you hit hard times and you're working and not claiming benefits you will slip through the net, no one is going to help you unless you can get a voucher to go to a food bank.
Iv always worked but iv had some hard times, iv gone without food so that DC can eat.
No child should go hungry especially not in this country

OP your post makes me sad and angry in equal measure. Being hungry is never a child's fault & the rise in food banks in the last few years is truly shocking. Add this to the jobs & wages crisis in this country & we have a truly desperate situation.

@MaskingForIt you do realise we are in a pandemic? You do realise that we are supposed to be social distancing and avoiding going out if necessary?

Would it really be a good idea to encourage people to go into schools and start mixing together?

*struggling waste= struggling to feed their children waste
*For jobs= four jobs.

YABU. Many thousands of people have suffered a cut in their income, through no fault of their own. Being paid 80% of your salary doesn't mean you can choose to pay 80% of your bills, unfortunately. Many people, even if they can pay bills, don't have many savings.
None of this mess is the fault of children, and no child should ever go hungry. If the government can waste millions on useless test and trace systems, they can afford to provide meals for vulnerable children.

There are just some people in this country who don’t believe that many of our children are going hungry. Maybe we should be too hard on OP because it does beggars belief that this is happening g in one of the worlds’ largest economies.
OP - if you’re genuinely interested in this and want to know how/ why/if it’s happening you could try volunteering for someone like FareShare or a local food bank. It’s a real eye opener and will soon cure you of the nation that kids are going hungry because their parents live Sky more than their own kids.

How irresponsible for people to have children knowing that there was to be a global pandemic and they may loose their jobs/ have their wages cut....oh wait.....

YABVU