What's happened to Free School Meals provision?

[Carpathian2]

I've just had this from my child's school

It's not Tory corruption. 🤦‍♀️ The food is being provided by the catering companies who usually do the school meals. The schools have already paid the catering companies for this term, so they are being asked to provide food for the FSM children. They aren't being paid any extra, they're just having to provide food as they've already been paid

^^ This!

Some people are so hung up on the idea of ‘being humble for every morsel’ and ‘being humiliated’ their pride seems to have got in the way of gratitude.

Schools aren’t obliged to feed your children for you. It’s a kind gesture supposed to stop children going hungry. The boxes may not be ideal, but they’re free, and someone has put time and effort into packaging them and handing them out to you.

Why is the thread giving people on benefits are bad name? Most of the people saying it is not ideal and not on benefits or receiving the food themselves. It's not great for the children have to go to school to collect it and if parents go they may need to pay bus fares. The food itself is possible although not very substantial if it's the main meal of the day which actually was the whole point of free school meals.

Because lots of people are complaining the parcel is too small/no choice/kid doesn’t like beans/bananas were too brown/have to leave the house to pick it up/government has some sort of conspiracy theory to deprive children of the full amount of food they’re ‘entitled’ to/Parents saying they’d rather let kids go hungry or go hungry themselves than suffer the indignity of collecting their parcel. These are the sort of comments that give parents on benefits a bad name. And that’s very sad, as with the current pandemic more and more people are losing their incomes and having to rely on FSM and benefits for the first time.

The food isn’t meant to replace the child’s main meal of the day, it’s to ensure the child has lunch 5 days a week. Even hot FSM at school are tiny in portion size and often there is no choice, or a choice between say a jacket potato or pasta with cheese.

You may not be getting the equivalent of what you feel entitled to cash wise, but schools and catering companies have to pay their staff, someone to make up the boxes, someone to sit there all day handing out the boxes. On occasion staff may need payment to deliver a box eg if a family is shielding or parent is disabled and nobody else can collect it.

Paying a bus fare to get food isn’t ‘great’ for anyone but unless you live close to the school/supermarket/food bank it’s a cost of living you budget for. Shopping online has a delivery charge too. I don’t understand why people think they should get the cost of travelling to collect free food refunded, be it a voucher for a supermarket or a food parcel from school.

If these companies have been paid upfront for this term then why are they so hasty to furlough staff, surely they should still have staff in the kitchens to produce something decent.

My friend worked in the canteen at the local college and they laid off ppl very quickly during lockdown 1.

It's unacceptable that this is happening,
organisingdrunksquirrels.medium.com/please-sir-i-want-some-more-ad2657d54164

Chartwells is a division of Compass whose chairman is a Tory donor. They can’t profit from vouchers. The real issue is not how long you can make the food last but that companies are profiting from fsm kids.

If these companies have been paid upfront for this term then why are they so hasty to furlough staff, surely they should still have staff in the kitchens to produce something decent.

What do you mean by ‘produce something decent’?
If you mean cook and deliver a hot meal to your child daily, then no I don’t think their budgets or time will stretch to that, regardless of how many staff have been furloughed.

If the school is having to pay the school meals supplier in full, does that mean the company can not claim furlough for its workers? Is the government is only giving schools £3.50 a week to replace the lunches, if the original money is going to the supplier?
@kowari

Where I work all but the cook in charge have been furloughed. I know during the Autumn term one or two were furloughed at a time, for half of the term.

The box doesn’t actually contain the value of the daily entitlement and I’m basing this on Tesco prices and not the cheaper bulk prices the supplier would get it.

There is no "value of daily entitlement".

Say school pays £3 per lunch toast catering company for a FSM lunch.

That £3 pays for staff, fuel, equipment to cook the lunch. Office staff who plan menus, check nutrition, order supplies, do staff payroll etc. Plus the catering company contract will build in profit.

Of that £3 probably as little as 50p will be raw food items.

The government wants the catering company to continue to be paid and hand over the food to you to be prepared.

and you dont just get the food. Catering company staff have to plan the boxes, order food, pack it, pay costs for storage & refrigeration, check the nutrition meets guidelines for children, manage their food inventory etc, continue to manage staff payrolls etc.

Of course everybody just wants to be given money but the government can't afford it, they just need to feed your kids.

I literally cannot believe the entitlement of some people! Where do you think all this money comes from? If I were on benefits, I would be extremely grateful that I live in such a country where we get free or subsidised housing, free health care, free education and also free food. I think this amount is substantial enough. I honestly don't know what you expect - free branded products, crisps, ready meals if you don't know how to cook for your family? Please be realistic people. For the rest of us not on benefits, our children mainly have to have sandwiches etc for lunches too. Except that we pay for ours, and yours too!

@TrixieTrouble

If the school is having to pay the school meals supplier in full, does that mean the company can not claim furlough for its workers? Is the government is only giving schools £3.50 a week to replace the lunches, if the original money is going to the supplier? *@kowari*

Where I work all but the cook in charge have been furloughed. I know during the Autumn term one or two were furloughed at a time, for half of the term.

So is the caterer being paid by the school in full, and then claiming furlough money on top of that?

Chartwells seem to be thieving scallywags - charging the government £40 to send out less than £5 worth of food is disgraceful. Stupid government not to just issue food vouchers,

@HikeForward quite.

The people who have made out these parcels are likely keyworkers who are on piss all wages themselves - dinner ladies, classroom assistants.

I don't think people realise how tricky running a school canteen is at the best of times. When schools went back in September, many canteens were, for a while, told they weren't to cook hot food or to have the canteen fully open to pupils- they were only able to provide paper bags with a daily packed lunch in it for children on FSM because of the regulations. These were handed out by staff. It took a while to get canteens fitted out with screens etc.

When hot food was allowed, children were required to order their meals a week in advance so the canteen knew how much food they needed to request from the main catering hub, almost down to the last sausage. It's a very delicate system - people assume that being a dinner lady involved smacking food down on a plate, but even in non covid times, things need to be done a certain way and at certain times, in order to fit with regulations and budget constraints.

Basically, these people are not cackling in glee as they watch children pick at their single tuna sandwich and apple. They are not denying children a big hot meal. They are doing the best they can in impossible circumstances and they cannot be everything to everyone.

Quite frankly if you'd seen what most children pick from the hot food counter you'd see this as the better option - a spring roll with beans on top, anyone?

School meals have not been filling for a long time. The portions are tiny for a start.

As usual, people who haven't been in a school since they were 18 years old are unlikely to know what the school environment is like now.

How much money is actually available to provide boxes or vouchers? Are the catering companies profiting from the schools being closed?

On the original twitter thread the 'hamper' contained a loaf of bread dated November. It's outrageous and so many here are missing the point that profit is being gained from child poverty.

Some of you are happy to see a child given stale dried up food but not happy for the parents to be given that money to buy the food themselves. It's fine for a Tory donating CEO to keep the money instead

I got a parcel from my sons school last week. I was quite happy with it. Apart from the tiniest bit of cheese which wouldn't even have done one sandwich, and bread like cardboard. The rest of it was fine - including the biggest onion I've ever seen!

I do prefer the vouchers as obviously I know what my kids like. So I can buy decent bread but value baked beans (they sent us Heinz) etc.

And obviously loads of fags and booze. (This is a joke, I don't smoke and rarely drink)

Because lots of people are complaining the parcel is too small/no choice/kid doesn’t like beans/bananas were too brown/have to leave the house to pick it up/government has some sort of conspiracy theory to deprive children of the full amount of food they’re ‘entitled’ to/Parents saying they’d rather let kids go hungry or go hungry themselves than suffer the indignity of collecting their parcel. These are the sort of comments that give parents on benefits a bad name. And that’s very sad, as with the current pandemic more and more people are losing their incomes and having to rely on FSM and benefits for the first time.

As I said, most of the comments are coming from people who don't claim FSM. I don't think it's ideal at all and I have never claimed FSMs.

The food isn’t meant to replace the child’s main meal of the day, it’s to ensure the child has lunch 5 days a week. Even hot FSM at school are tiny in portion size and often there is no choice, or a choice between say a jacket potato or pasta with cheese.

FSM when they were introduced were meant to be as the child's main meal for the day. That was the whole point of free school meals- to make sure the child doesn't have to go a whole day with very little food. It wasn't so that they could have a snack in the middle of the day with the expectation that they would be getting a huge meal in the evening .I don't think this policy has changed as the reality some children still aren't getting much to eat in the evening..

You may not be getting the equivalent of what you feel entitled to cash wise, but schools and catering companies have to pay their staff, someone to make up the boxes, someone to sit there all day handing out the boxes. On occasion staff may need payment to deliver a box eg if a family is shielding or parent is disabled and nobody else can collect it.

There you are again assuming that because I don't think the situation is ideal I must be on benefits myself. I'm not blaming the schools themselves if that is all they can offer but that doesn't mean that this is what should be happening in this day and age. They should be able to give vouchers for people that want them.

Shopping online has a delivery charge too. I don’t understand why people think they should get the cost of travelling to collect free food refunded, be it a voucher for a supermarket or a food parcel from school.

Yes but when you shop online you can buy a weeks worth of food so it is cost-effective. The same applies to getting a bus to the shops. Paying 20 pounds a week for a bus fare (to get lunch each day) is not quite so cost-effective.

So is the caterer being paid by the school in full, and then claiming furlough money on top of that

I can't say if the company has been paid in full but I have been told by catering staff themselves that they are furloughed. The trust I work for will eventually move the school catering back in house, one of the other secondaries in the trust (which is huge) has achieved this.

What's wrong with sending parents vouchers then they can use it in their main shop.

@Beautiful3

What's wrong with sending parents vouchers then they can use it in their main shop.

Because all benefit Mums are feckless idiots who swap the vouchers for drugs and alcohol obvs

I think the government voucher scheme is now back up and running (or will be very soon) so hopefully more will get vouchers

I actually think it sounds quite good for 5 lunches. And a year 9 child in most schools will have done some degree of food tech classes surely (don't all secondary schools do them?) and should be able to put those together themselves from those ingredients.

Beautiful3

1. it costs more, means the food the catering companies have already ordered is wasted.
2. vouchers have sadly been abused. They were not supposed to be used for non food but many supermarkets reported staff being pushed/threatened into accepting them for alcohol or cigarettes etc. In other cases there were reports of them being sold on for less than face value, eg to convert them to cash which could be used for anything.
3. did I mention it costs too much. It costs the government far more, to give people the cash to buy whatever they like at retail prices AND to furlough/recompense catering companies, than to get catering companies to provide food already ordered.

Profit is being gained from child food poverty

Profit is being gained from child food poverty

Profit is being gained from child food poverty

did I mention it costs too much. It costs the government far more, to give people the cash to buy whatever they like at retail prices AND to furlough/recompense catering companies, than to get catering companies to provide food already ordered.

What makes you think the companies aren't furloughing their staff anyway?

@TheFuckingDogs the problem is that many people - including some on this thread - simply don't believe that that is wrong.

Anyone bleating about gratitude/saying they could make carrot soup to sustain a hungry teenager out of one carrot/claiming that vouchers are spent on vodka and fags, for a start. They believe that poor children deserve to be hungry and that companies exist to make profits but they're too chicken shit to say so openly.

Oh I know but it’s just so depressing isn’t it sadpaper 😕