A loaf and a block of cheese is not lunch for ten days

[ZazieSheHer]

So some of the free school lunch boxes contain very little food.

Marcus Rashford condemns free school meal packages

“...a package, supposedly containing £30 worth of food to last for 10 days, comprising just a loaf of bread, some cheese, a tin of beans, two carrots, two bananas, three apples, two potatoes, a bag of pasta, three Frubes, two Soreen bars and a tomato”.

mobile.twitter.com/RoadsideMum/status/1348646428084760576

Can’t imagine what it’s like home schooling hungry kids. Would like to say I’m shocked but I’m not.

"I don't give a shit what kind of parents they have,or how much money they earn or if they have more or less than me. I care about the kids , because no child should suffer or go hungry. Because whatever their situation and the reasons why, it's not their fault, they don't have a choice."

Comment of the thread. Its not about the parents!!!! Its about the children. I can put up with a lot in terms if difference of opinion. But those who think its ok for kids to go hungry... Well, its a no thanks from me.

The biggest scandal is that a company have literally stolen from hungry children and fraudulently obtained public money to do so.

@Wheresmykimchi so why is everyone complaining about the Government, this is down to the company, and they have to explain themselves.

If we are going to allocate £30/week to children in low income families, let’s make sure that the maximum goes to those families and the minimum to “overheads.” Let’s be efficient. Cash or vouchers. Or even a pre-made back worth £30 delivered by one of the online grocers.

The middle man isn’t adding value here. Let’s get as much good quality food to that family as possible, and if there is extra for breakfast or mum, then even better.

@Empressofthemundane

If we are going to allocate £30/week to children in low income families, let’s make sure that the maximum goes to those families and the minimum to “overheads.” Let’s be efficient. Cash or vouchers. Or even a pre-made back worth £30 delivered by one of the online grocers.

The middle man isn’t adding value here. Let’s get as much good quality food to that family as possible, and if there is extra for breakfast or mum, then even better.

I agree with you 100% but I wanted to point out that its £15 per week, but usually given out as £30 every 2 weeks

[quote ineedaholidaynow]@Wheresmykimchi so why is everyone complaining about the Government, this is down to the company, and they have to explain themselves.[/quote]
The company are a Tory funder.

The government were completely complicit and allowed this to happen.

Do you think the company were able to do it without gvt approval?

I can't breathe without my local council approving it. Do you think that the government weren't complicit?

@PodgeBod, I stand corrected! Then even more important that as much value as possible goes directly to the family.

I’m quite happy for mums to be given the cash directly. She knows what her children will eat, if they have allergies,etc.

I wonder if some of this comes down to schools having contracts with school meal providers that they are trying to make work somehow despite school closures.

Chartwells used to be the caterer at my son's school, I am sure the Government had not interest whatsoever in the food they were providing.

Almost the most shocking thing about this thread is that 25% of people have voted YABU. Another shocking in is that people are actually surprised that the government have once again turned something into a shitshow and once again shown their utter contempt for the poor. And a third shocking thing is that people actually vote for this bunch of bastards. Tory voters - you are complicit in children going hungry.

I doubt they were maliciously complicit, more like lazy, incompetent and not paying attention. @Wheresmykimchi

Isn’t there an old saying that goes something like: never ascribe malice to what stupidity can explain.

I think the suppliers are the companies who already have the contract with the school to provide lunches. I doubt that you can use another supplier, because the contract has already been awarded. It’s not a new contract.

This is staggering isn't it. Catering companies have rinsed a crazy profit out of feeding low income children.....but we can't revert to vouchers because some parents might flog them.

Sack cloth and fucking ashes.

@Lalliella, I don’t think this wasn’t a central government decision. It was at the local authority level. I say this because reports are that the provision seems to vary widely depending upon where people are.

Do we know which LEAs are responsible for the lousy food packs? I’ve missed that detail.

That being the case @BungleandGeorge, it’s the responsibility of who ever owns the contract, whether that’s an academy school or an LEA, to performance manage the supplier.

It's not just incompetence though, the government literally does not care. They just care about giving money to a company who is a Tory funder and who is obviously benefitting from this situation. Win-win for both the company and the Tories.

@Empressofthemundane

That being the case *@BungleandGeorge*, it’s the responsibility of who ever owns the contract, whether that’s an academy school or an LEA, to performance manage the supplier.

I agree, as far as I remember it was our school that awarded the contract. It’s not a central government issue although there should have been some Central guidance about what was in there (I dont know if there was or not). It still reflects very badly on the caterers if they’ve sent out less food than would have been provided in school

Unfortunately it's a problem that I can't see a straight forward solution to. I think giving out vouchers is better than cash because you can put restrictions on vouchers. With cash you can't and you might have more people abusing the system. It will only be a small % who'll abuse the system but enough for the daily fail to make headlines out of it.

Some of the shit food boxes I have seen you wouldn't even take on ready steady cook. And surely it costs more in manpower to have someone sit there chopping up the tomatoes and peppers than the cost of a whole item? Don't forget these suppliers are getting them at wholesale cost, not retail cost.

Some posters on this thread should hang their heads in shame. I know competitive undertaking is a thing on mumsnet but these are children. Children need to be fed. Yes some feckless parents will waste the vouchers and sell them, but the minority should not ruin it for the majority. Let the parents have vouchers and not let these con artist scumbags take their massive cut of taxpayers money.

London Borough of Bromley is Tory run and mainly uses Chartwell as its school caterers.

If the school is an Academy they will make their own choice of catering company. The CEO of our local MAT hates the Tories so certainly wouldn’t be choosing a catering company on the basis that it is owned by a Tory donor.

@Empressofthemundane

This is where I need clarification. My DS school was about to start issuing the hampers but a few hours after emailing we should collect they wrote back saying the LA have authorised the vouchers ( which was music to my ears) so what I don’t get is why are so many schools not getting the vouchers? Is it that the LA are not authorising or applying for them as it seems some boroughs/schools are getting vouchers and others aren’t.

I can’t speak for all schools but certainly at my ds school when his bubble was in isolation in November it was pointed out that some of the items were inedible due to being stale or rotten the school basically said tough, I pointed out to them
It was a waste to the public purse but they paid no attention, so if the school aren’t fussed about the quality then the LA certainly won’t be fussed. I appreciate not all schools are like this though and some have been appalled by the contents of the hampers.

@VinylDetective I didn’t say the pictures from Twitter were acceptable.
I answered the poster who put a list of food up, and said an MP wouldn’t survive on it for lunches.
My DH does have almost exactly that for his lunch daily. He doesn’t use the posh dining rooms in parliament- he’d rather take a packed lunch and work as he eats at his desk. (Living away from family for most of the week lots of MPs work as hard as possible in London so they can take 1 day off at weekends to spend time with their kids)
And yes- they get expenses. If they didn’t, you’d only have very rich people like Jacob Rees mogg being MPs. Most of the expenses pay the staff wages. And stuff like the office rent and phone bills for helping constituents. And yes, for computers too. When you receive thousands of emails a week from people needing help you need a way to deal with that.

At no point did I say that the Twitter pics were ok. Or that splitting up tins of tuna and putting them into bags is ok. It’s not. It’s shit. Schools and local authorities and the government need to make sure this doesn’t happen.

Think about, all you doubters, how it looks that they divided the veg into small clingfilmed portions in some of these "hampers", half a tomato, half a pepper, a bit of carrot, that is contact with the food that is not needed in these times. Why?

[quote AccidentallyOnPurpose]@LizFlowers you do realise that for some children on FSM the food provided by the school is either their main meal or their only meal.

Do you still think it's adequate and more than enough?[/quote]
Perhaps we should be finding better parents for these kids?

It will be schools or the trust that oversee the catering costs and standards.

If the LA is your provider then again the school is responsible to check the level of service. You buy into this service as you would do employing a cleaner or gardener.
If you have your own in house provider then it is the school responsibility.
All of which the Governors review and ask questions about costs, provision, best value and additional support for those without funding. They should be occasionally sampling of a meal but not in lock down. The income and expectative will go to the governors on a regular basis.
The Head is responsible for food standards, portion sizes, etc.
It lies with the school to be ensuring caterers provide an excellent standard of provision and address any shortfall in service or standards.