OH thinks no kids are left hungry?!!

[ihate2020]

I've joined the cook4kids over the half term in our area.

Oh is pissed of about it and thinks the parents that collect the lunch boxes I've made up are just out to get a freebie and I should spend the money on our own kids

AIBU to say he is a delunsional idiot?

Op you are doing a good thing and your husband is wrong. Keep up the good work :)

Are there hungry children? Yes.
Is it their parents fault? Sometimes yes.
Is it ever the children’s fault? Of course not!!!
Whether the parents are addicts or whatever is irrelevant if you can food into hungry children.

People are too proud to take charity and other parents have their own issues. It is ridiculous to say no children go without. X

This argument is as old as the hills. The Victorian middle and upper classes, for instance, couldn't accept the simple fact that poor people suffered because they hadn't got enough money. Seems obvious, doesn't it? But no, it was because they were idle, drunken, feckless, godless, had too many children, or didn't know how to budget or how to cook. Pretty much the same arguments doing the rounds today.

It is hard to pay all your bills and buy the basics for your kids when you have no job or very low wages. It can be a nightmare. Anyone who thinks otherwise hasn't had to do it.

@rainyoutside are you considering how things might have changed for people since covid? That there are families waiting for UC payments? Families dependent on freelance wages that don’t qualify for the chancellor’s scheme? The smugness of your post is frustrating. Maybe under normal circumstances the issue is not as acute as people think (which I don’t believe or the Trussell Trust and it’s Ilk wouldn’t exist - but we are not living in normal times. If I or my husband lost our self employed incomes we as a family would be screwed.

There are some people who simply struggle at life. They may not have done well at school and can’t cope with form filling, have no internet access, can only get low paid work, end up with kids who they struggle to care for no matter how much they love them. These people are always going to need support from people who can manage our lives fine. It’s not their fault, it’s the card they were dealt. If you can’t ever see yourself in that position then you are lucky and extend your hand to help

@MootingMirror

DFIL is the Chair of Governors at a school in central London where there is a lot of food poverty etc and DH is a teacher (and I used to be one). I'll be honest even though I'll get slammed for it. Children are not going hungry unless their parents are either not applying for the help they're entitled to or the parents are not prioritising the children over their own needs. When lockdown kicked in, DFILs school gave out vouchers for school lunches - the vouchers weren't spent on food for the students and the vulnerable children (who still attended school) turned up without lunches. (The canteen was closed which is why the vouchers were given out instead of them getting the meals at school). The school then handed out food parcels to the families instead of the vouchers and the students STILL came in without food because it was sold/swapped for other things. It got to the point where the very vulnerable children who came to school had the canteen reopened (in a limited capacity) and the school had staff going door-to-door handing out food to students and watching them open it so it couldn't be sold or traded elsewhere. Food is cheap in this country, benefits have been raised, schools have provisions for pupil premium students - some parents do not care. What you're doing will help hungry children but those children are hungry because of their parents.

Yes, this, sums it up. Theres a lot of ppl on here saying this and that bt has anyone actually come on and said my children are going hungry even after ever that has Been put in place as mentioned here to help them

when i was younger i was a single mum of 2 girls i worked when they were in school and by the time id paid the bills i had £10 to dpend on foid for the week it just about covered breakfast and a meal for the kuds i had to go without school holidays we struggled even more, im talking 30 years ago, its saddens me so much that parents and kids are still going through this and probably always will, i really dont believe many parents would puck up a lunch if they didnt really need it. people who csn afford it will usually stick there nose up to free food. well done

@Dugee

*For those of you that are out of touch and unable to google, over 100 children a week are hospitalised with malnutrition.

''Nearly 2,500 children in England hospitalised with malnutrition since January, new research shows''

www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/2500-children-hospitalised-malnutrition-england-a4496106.html*

This is shocking but there is no context to your post. Those with children are provided with top up benefits for the children, it's enough to provide the basics. If that money isn't being spent on providing for the children then the parents are neglectful and social services should be involved.

Are they malnourished from neglect or medical causes?

My DD has kidney failure, a lot of the kids with CKD are very underweight and it's possible some of them become malnourished through no fault of the parents.

Out of interest, where do the people saying "social services need to take the kids away " think social services are going to put the kids? Every time I go onto FB there are adverts begging for Foster carers.

The vast majority of children live in poverty not because their parents are workshy, are drug or alcohol dependent, or can’t manage their children properly, as government rhetoric increasingly seems to suggest. They are poor because their parents don’t have an adequate income to make ends meet.
Regardless of what some people on here think, children are going hungry because families are living in working poverty as very often there is no alternative to low paid jobs, with few opportunities for progression. The lack of good, affordable childcare means that many families cannot afford to work more hours.
While the impact of having a parent who misuses alcohol or drugs is very significant, the number of families with such parents is small.
Children’s progress is still driven largely by factors such as social class, age and ethnicity. While studies agree that parental behaviour can help improve children’s attainment, this fails to explain the vast majority of differences between poorer and wealthier children.
So rather than reduce responsibility for poverty to individual actions, we need to face the fact that poverty is substantially a result of society’s choices and government‘s policies.

This obsession with the perceived fecklessness of the parents... you do know that some children don't have parents or guardians, don't you? Some children are alone in the world, some fall through the cracks to the point they're responsible for their own food and sometimes their own housing.

It will do nothing. Absolutely nothing. And shouting this over and over will not help nor make you a better person.

But absolutely claptrap. I can't believe any halfway intelligent person can spout such ignorant nonsense. If this saves even ONE child from dying due to malnutrition, it's worth it. How on earth can you claim that saving children's lives "does absolutely nothing" and that if we can't magically fix the entire system we just shouldn't bother doing the little that we can? You might as well say "well there's no cure for cancer so why bother treating it at all."

It does not take 5 weeks to get a first payment for UC, this is completely false, you can get an advance on the same day or next working day.

That's a total lie. I have plenty of friends who waited weeks for UC.

And PIP is even worse - I know people who applied in May who are still waiting. Current wait time for PIP is several months, and even then they automatically turn down many applications which are overturned on appeal. So if you lose your job and are disabled, you face a wait of many months before you start receiving benefits.

I live in an area with a lot of food bank usage I happen to know a few families that regularly use them. but I have to say I do agree with there's definitely an element of something for nothing with a lot of people that use food banks etc. and often they definitely don't need it as i know one mother who has the latest mobile phone with over £50 per month contract, sky tv, a holiday abroad each year etc. I know this person quite well and she brags about not having to buy any food shopping which helps her afford all her luxurys in life. she is on benefits and is much better off than me but i manage to feed my own children.

If the parents are choosing to rent in an extortionate area - when there are cheaper places for them to live in - whilst letting their children go hungry, then it is the parents who have made the choice to let their children go hungry.

This is incredibly naive.

Houses and jobs aren't things you can just wave a magic wand and they fall into your lap.

A rental period might be 12 or 18 months and there are often harsh financial penalties for breaking your tenancy agreement early. New tenancies require a substantial deposit and often require two months' rent upfront. And of course there are the costs of moving itself - movers are expensive, and long-distance train tickets can also be very costly. People who live paycheque to paycheque are often trapped in bad tenancies since they can't afford the huge upfront costs associated with moving. Not to mention most jobs require a notice period, you can't just walk out on your job! And if you're furloughed, why would you want to quit your job on the hopes of being able to find a new job in a different area?

Not to mention the blithe hand waving "oh just move!" ignores the fact that in order to move to a new area, one first has to land a new job in that area (during a pandemic where half the country has shut down and fewer places are hiring), find new schools for their children, find new healthcare services, find new childcare, etc. etc.

And why should people be forced to abandon their careers, their families, their roots, uproot their children away from their education and all their friends, because their job has temporarily been impacted by a global catastrophe outside of their control?

There are NMW jobs all over the country.

The comment you're replying to was making the point that a person on NMW is unlikely to be able to afford the thousands of pounds it costs to move cross-country.

Your OH is very fortunate. I once worked in a welfare office in a very poor inner city area. Those people are not lazy, greedy or any of the other nasty epithets thrown at them, the6 are desperate and without hope.

There have always been and will always be parents who don't prioritise their children over their own needs, but there are far more parents who are barely scraping by and who need all the help they can get without others being all "ah, but the parents are shit parents", that sort of argument only makes decent but struggling parents more embarrassed to get help because they don't want to be seen as scroungers and ne'er do wells.

The main reason children and adults are going hungry is because of the policies of the last decade that have seen 1.9 million people using foodbanks in 2019/2020, a 300k increase from the previous year. These increases are not all down to feckless parents.

They, not the6

So sad - one of the richest countries in the world apparently abs yet we have so many hungry children. Something is awfully wrong here

I haven't read all the replies, but there will be a proportion of "chancers", as there are with anything. I know of some people who treat this kind of thing like a game but always have wine in the fridge. They do bugger up their finances legitimately but it doesn't matter if they spent their last £40 on a makeup artist for a night out, if they have genuinely fucked up their finances through poor impulse control or bad choices, it's not the kid's fault.

Poverty is a thing though, and there are people who manage their finances as well as they could reasonably be expected to do, and still have months where they have nothing, and the majority of these people are "working poor" from what the stats seem to say.

Then at the moment there are all sorts of extraordinary circumstances, with people in London having their DHL delivery from a West End leading lady and other such scenarios.

Tories have really fucked up with this one. Their rationale is that if they give it out as money or vouchers, it might still not end up in the mouths of the kids, whereas a free school meal can only end up in the mouth of the kids. They may be right in some scenarios but I don't think they quite thought through the backlash, having flogged so much cash at other initiatives this year. Kier Stamer will be drinking to this tonight no doubt.

@froggygoneonakillingspree nope I can assure you it's not a total lie, some of the people you know maybe telling porkies though OR they may have had to wait as they do not produce enough verification, OR they could be transitioning from another benefit, therefore have already had a benefit payment, so won't be paid twice in same month OR it could be a human error in processing.

It might appear to you to be a total lie but that probably based on your bias view, bigger picture - not a lie.

@MootingMirror

Well put , not “politically correct “but unfortunately true for not all but majority of these children

@MootingMirror you make a good point and give a good insight to some of the real reasons children are going hungry. However, not all parents are like this and do not intentionally allow their kids to go hungry.

Reading a lot of these comments, I'm starting to wonder if there might be a few Tory MP's on here trying to pass themselves off as teachers, social workers and food bank volunteers etc. The people I've spoken to who work in these roles have been shocked and horrified by the poverty and desperation that some families experience and wouldn't dream of trying to argue against free school meals for children in the holidays.

I am not saying that there aren't neglectful parents who don't prioritise their children, of course there are. However, there are also families who are really struggling right now. Loads of people are losing their jobs at the moment and are having to adjust to living on UC, often with pre-existing financial commitments such as mortgages and loans etc. A lot of people do put their children first, often going without food themselves, but it only takes one broken essential item or mishap to cause a destitute situation where they can no longer provide food for their children. Free school meals are a godsend to some families, most don't try to sell them as some on here like to suggest.

As someone who grew up in poverty, with a mother who had to go begging sometimes just to make sure we had food to eat, I say shame on anyone on here trying to argue against free school meals for hungry children. The argument that we need to address the root causes are right but it doesn't feed children who are going hungry right now. The government can provide food for children to eat in the holidays and address the root causes of why these children are going hungry in the first place, it's not and either/or.

This same government has just spent 12 billion on an ineffective test and trace system, the cost of providing free school meals in the holidays would cost a fraction of this. It would seem that the government also needs to get it's priorities straight because at the moment it looks like ensuring their friends in the private sector make obscene profits from this pandemic is far more important than ensuring poor children don't go hungry.

I find it amazing that some people think that anybody would be able to swap their kids' free school packed lunches/vouchers for booze or fags. They obviously don't know how much fags cost these days!
One twat of an MP even said that parents were swapping them for drugs! Yeah - I can just see your local drug dealer handing over some Class A for a sandwich, a piece of fruit and a juice box
Yes, some parents are feckless, but the children still need feeding. People must live under a rock or have very blessed lives if they do not believe true poverty exists in our country.

A short reading of the Relationships forum on here will demonstrate how very many adults have endured horrible abusive mums, dads, step-parents, or guardians.
Thousands of first hand examples of deliberate meanness abound. It should be of no surprise to anyone that people just like this are actively controlling children with food, or ignoring their needs, or using them to obtain what they want.
Directly providing children with food is the only answer.