Children going hungry in the summer holidays

I merely suggested that in some cases we are subsiding expensive habits.
Such as eating?

Excellent post loopyloo I couldn’t agree more.

We live in a seaside town with beautiful beaches and old fashioned parks with a boating lake, playground, fair ground, swimming pool etc. Unbelievably there are children at my DGC’s primary school. who have never been there. The bus fare for a family of 2 adults and 2 children would be around £14 return, an awful lot of money to a family on benefits and that’s before you do anything else at all. I feel so sad for these poor children.

People really need to stop pretending the benefit system is generous and works. It doesnt.
Im disabled. Because of a computer mess up I was sanctioned. Which meant i only got 18 pound a week.
For six months.
In my voluntry work i have met hundreds of people in simalar situations. These are the people using foodbanks.
And the single mothers i know whos exs dont pay maitenance. They work as carers. Which is disgustingly low paid. But no one minds that the woman looking after there elderly relative is being paid under nmw when you take travel into account.
These woman are paying out at least over a grand every month on rest and food alone. Sometimes two grand.
Its easy to judge when you have loved through a time when housing was cheaper and jobs easier.

A cleaning vacancy came up in a care home near me and it had over a hundred vacancies.

As gillybob says, a family outing is expensive - yes, even if you take a picnic. I bought our toddlers an ice cream each for almost £5 at the van in the park this week. Bus fares are expensive, about £3 for 3 miles in this area.

The big screen tv's in houses where people have low incomes or are on benefits are often one of the first things to be named as extravagances by judgemental folks. Children don't play out or roam about as we did. We were lucky to have far fewer cars on the road and more open countryside. Also, our parents hadn't been indoctrinated by fear, into feeling if they took their eyes off us we'd be stolen away and it would be their fault. TV provides endless entertainment for children. Netflix isn't expensive and has great channels for children.
I'd much prefer they were outside playing but I've no problem understanding why a big tv is seen as essential. Especially when children have little else in comparison with many others of their age.

Here in our small town in East Anglia one of the local churches provides packed lunches for three days a week for schoolchildren who are receiving free school dinners.

I support our local food bank by donating groceries every week.

I know a Mum who has had help from the Food Bank and I give her bags of Bramley apples - the children jump with joy and ask for an apple pie for tea please Mum!

I wish I could use a food bank; I certainly qualify and my doctor has suggested it on several occasions. BUT,in a wheelchair and with no car, nor access to one...getting to my local FB would take 2 buses there, and another three back, none of which run more than hourly. Then the million dollar question; how do I get home with whatever I am given? So yes, I understand only too well why some people have the audacity to* turn up in cars!*

I’m so sorry to read your post Miepl is there no charity organisation who could help you ? Being unable to physically get there should not exclude you from help! Where are you in the country roughly ?

The people running the food banks will deliver in some areas Miep1 - can you make enquiries at your surgery or from CAB?

I have made my local food bank my charity of choice. I know people that volunteer at it, so hear about the good work it does.

I understand people saying that the benefit system means that people shouldn’t need the food bank but children don’t get a choice in how their parents spend the money.

From the work I do at my local council I hear stories of children not having a hot meal from Friday lunch time until Monday. Also teachers giving children breakfast in school because they are too hungry to learn. It’s a very sad situation in this day and age.

People saying that being on benefits means that people shouldn't need food banks really have no idea. Have they heard of sanctioning and do they understand how unfair a system it is? Have they heard of delays? People often start off getting benefit having been pushed into debt. It is not a generous amount whatever the right wing press and poverty porn programmes may tell you.

Reading some of these comments has made my blood boil ?. How good it must be, not to have to walk a mile in the worn-down shoes of those who need to use a Foodbank.
I also give a couple of bags of groceries, hygiene products, etc to our local Foodbank each week. My DH used to work for a poultry firm, and we get eggs at a reduced price, so a dozen or so gets taken along, too. A person (client) is allowed 3 eggs. I usually include pet food, too, because this is as much a necessity as is family food. One checkout assistant commented on the amount of pet food I’d included in my shopping, and I replied that most of it was for the Foodbank. Her reply was similar to an earlier poster’s about children - ‘They shouldn’t have pets if they can’t afford them’. She just about got her head in her hands. Without the comfortable presence of a much-loved pet, a lonely life might just about be pointless for some.
I also take clothes to the Foodbank that would normally go to the charity shop. If a person can’t afford food, then they can’t afford to buy clothes from a charity shop either.
We’re not encouraging laziness by helping people who have little, we’re sharing what we have. Anyway, what right have any of us to judge others, when we really don’t know their story?

"My DH used to work for a poultry firm, and we get eggs at a reduced price, so a dozen or so gets taken along, too. A person (client) is allowed 3 eggs. "
When in France we had chickens, and often had a surplus of eggs. I offered some to the french equivalent of food banks - a voluntary organisation - but they said they couldn't accept perishables.
"France
In total, around 3.5 million people rely on food banks in France.[94] One provider, the Banque Alimentaire has over 100 branches in France, serving 200 million meals a year to 1.85 million people.[95]"
In 2016 a law was passed making it an offense for supermarkets to throw away unsold food, instead donate to foodbanks. Does this law exist in the UK?
Back here in the NE I see many signs of poverty. It's difficult to know when to intervene and offer help. In my view it's mostly due to the lack of suitable jobs, in this digital age.

Fennel, I do believe some supermarkets, such as Aldi do donate unsold food.
Morrisons donate fruit and veg and Gregg's, unsold bread if the Foodbank van can get there before 5pm. Eggs have a date-stamp on them, so they're accepted.

Barnet, judgement is rife it appears! I voted Tory, wanted Brexit very badly, but not because of my dislike of immigrants ( just EU meddling and incompetence) and I in no way agree with the way some posters are thoroughly into ‘ poor bashing’ and often contribute to our food bank,

This is the charity I referred to:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restaurants_du_C%C5%93ur

Nanna58 I agree. I am Labour and voted Leave but it had nothing to do with immigration (Remain voters frequently tell me I am lying when I say that). I has not been possible to have rational debate because of the judgment and I think most Leave voters have stopped getting involved in online debates on the issue.
The poor bashing has been getting worse but it is no better than any other form of bigotry.

So.......What is the answer? If taxes and ni were to be increased to deal with ‘all that is wrong in this country ‘ everyone would moan.
Tax the rich? Most would move to other countries. Deal with all the tax evasion? That would probably cost nearly as much as got collected.
As with family finances the country also has emergencies. Has any country in the world found an answer?
Perhaps stop calling for any expensive inquiries into the next things to hit the headlines, etc. etc.
5th richest country? Are we really?

I was helped a lot with advice from gransnetters because I had a past experience stopping my urge to give to food banks. They gave me the help I needed to start giving.

I have had first hand experience of a mature single mother abusing the food bank system.
Providing cigarettes for herself and her boyfriend and petrol for the boyfriend were priorities.

She registered at as many food banks she could find.
When the allocated visits were over she went to the food banks or the church and burst into tears.
With a two year old in tow and a teenager at home they would not let her go empty handed even though she had had her allocated turns.

I posted on gransnet the full story and my problem was the memory of this mother was stopping me contributing.
I now give in food, sanitary product toiletries and dog food.

Should really add that the tears were put on to get lots of sympathy and cups of tea etc along with additional off the record food allocations.

Peep Firstly not everyone would moan and it has been proved that tax inspectors bring in more than they cost (which makes the reduction in their numbers ideological). The opposite is true of the amount spent on the small amount of benefit fraud.
Family finances are quite different from a country as families can't create currency. The Treasury is not short of money (as the bung to the DUP proved). It is how it is distributed.
Eventually there will have to be a universal income or something similar but we are a way from people accepting that.

Peep - interesting questions.

We need to take the wealth from the 1% (724 billion and counting) and freeze their assets so they don't take them abroad. We will need to demand repatriation of those funds they have stolen from HMRC and placed in off shore banks.

The answer to billionaire thieves threatening to leave is to nationalise their business empires. There is enough wealth to guarantee every person a decent standard of living - but not while supporting a billionaire class.

Of course the wealthy begrudge any pennies for the poor and have the audacity to make them scapegoats!!

grannypauline Well said. There is no point in starting with the idea that it can't be done.

If we have a welfare state, there are always those who will fall through the net and those who abuse it. I agree with those who say that the children cannot be blamed for having feckless parents.
Is it a generalisation that those visiting the food banks have huge TVs, Sky and smartphones? Do we really know that or is it an assumption?
As for the scratch cards, those who are desperate for money are easily tempted into buying them on the hope of getting some extra money. I would not blame them for that as long as a lot of money is not spent on them.

I think we have to find a midway point between total judgementalism and "do whatever you like, you've had a hard life, I'm not presuming to criticise." And that's not an easy one to negotiate. No, we don't want to return to Victorian notions of 'deserving poor' so those whose morals/ religious observance fall below expectations are denied help. (Altho' doesnt the NHS sort of do this in refusing surgery to folk who refuse to quit booze & fags? And haven't they got a point?) Nor do we want to blame kids for parents' failings. BUT there has to be responsibility! If you don't give your child a hot meal all week, then unless you're actually provably destitute, shouldnt there be intervention by state? It's not a matter of throwing extra handouts at them - they're failing. And I'm not going to say "well, poor soul has a tough life, she NEEDS to spend her tiny income on fags to cope." Sometimes we HAVE to do the right thing.

My husband and I keep to the adage that "every man deserves a hot meal once a day".
No matter what background, colour or creed.
Seeing a meal being eaten somehow takes the doubt out of giving.

Children are never to blame for lack of food in the home.
Lots are very hungry, unhappy, confused and then anger sets in as they grow older and more aware.