Schools in England warn of crisis of ‘heartbreaking’ rise in hungry children

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/sep/25/schools-in-england-warn-of-crisis-of-heartbreaking-rise-in-hungry-children

by mardiyah • 4 years ago

49 135 4 years ago

theguardian.com

throwamon• 4 years ago

Yes, it's so heartbreaking when it starts happening in first-world countries.

tomrod7• 4 years ago

I can't tell if your comment is in good faith or is sarcastic.

It's heartbreaking that children anywhere go hungry. Children didn't make the decisions that led them to their hunger. They didn't choose to be born in situations, regimes, or societies that failed them. They didn't choose and have no power over local culture, religions, politics, policies, wars, and other drivers of stupidity. They are victims, completely, of others who have power to make things better.

So yes, it is heartbreaking that this continues to happen in first-world (US/NATO aligned) countries, second-world (formerly Soviet aligned countries), and third-world (unaligned) countries.

People who complain about taxes going to feed children are social darwinists. We should pay teachers and lunch staff much better as well.

wiredearp• 4 years ago

I think that super power affiliation is perhaps a somewhat outdated definition of the three worlds concept and Britain certainly doesn't fit the modern one [1]. This guy argues that Britain is best thought of as a fourth world country [2] and he explains why the financial markets now compare Britain to a banana republic [3]

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_World

[2] https://eand.co/how-america-collapsed-and-became-a-fourth-wo...

[3] https://eand.co/britain-just-hit-the-next-level-of-self-dest...

pessimizer4• 4 years ago

"starts"?

Gravityloss• 4 years ago

Can't think of a thing with a better benefit to cost ratio for a than providing school children a free meal. It's very cheap and it sucks very much if isn't done.

This applies on society, government, municipality, village, family - so many levels.

adabyron3• 4 years ago

Free school meals for all kids could simplify a lot of things. Obviously it could be paid for by an income based tax. Nation wide tax makes most sense to me.

It's the cheapest & easy way to help these kids get nutrition. It benefits society more than the cost.

It also prevents the need to waste money on lunch cards, payment systems & some poor lady having to manage & collect payments.

pessimizer4• 4 years ago

Free school meals for all kids could simplify a lot of things.

A universal benefit guarantees 100% utilization. If you put in bureaucracy and/or a token payment, people will fail to navigate it (and downstream bureaucracies with their own budgets can make it more difficult to navigate), so like magic the program becomes a lot cheaper (by leaving children hungry.)

nerdawson• 4 years ago

Taxation is already used to fund schooling and ensuring kids are fed should simply be an extension of that.

The government have just cut taxes so they're heading in the opposite direction.

With that said, it doesn't address the underlying problem of kids being allowed to go hungry. If free school meals were universal (and they should be), that's still only 5 / 21 weekly meals provided for.

yamtaddle5• 4 years ago

Our schools serve pretty awful meals here (fairly shitty US state), but it was hard to say no to them when they were free due to Covid policies, and man, just the logistical improvement of not having to worry about having stuff on hand for lunches and getting it put together and packed in the morning and making sure the lunches made it into backpacks and into the car was so damn nice. That's like 25% of the getting-the-kids-around morning stress just gone. Made things way more chill.

wollsmoth5• 4 years ago

It's definitely possible to give better school lunches out. There sort of a general school funding issue too which is frustrating to hear about so often.

bombcar6• 4 years ago

I would be entirely in support for nation-wide soup kitchens open for lunch that provide a basic nutritious and free meal to anyone and everyone, no questions asked.

ljf4• 4 years ago

I genuinely think this could solve so many ills.

I really love a library near me that has near the door a load of nice paper shopping bags, labelled up - that anyone can take. Each will have different things in but contain stuff like wash kits and deodorant, tampons and sanitary towels, socks, gloves and even warm jumpers in winter. Anyone who needs one can just grab one. It is sad that we have to give out stuff like this, but equally, if we need to provide these things for people, let's do it in the lowest drama way of doing it, and that doesn't cause stigma or shame.

conductr4• 4 years ago

Making it universally accessible is the expensive part.

tomjen33• 4 years ago

Based on the food that is served in US schools, I wonder if you are not better of without.

That said, it is ridiculous to have hungry children in a country that also has national health care. It is much, much cheaper to feed a child than to deal with health issues from hunger.

PuppyTailWags7• 4 years ago

Good faith-ly asking here: What, if any, are the political arguments against government-provided 3 square meals a day for kids provided by default? Breakfast, lunch, and a little pickup baggie to go home with. The kids who don't need it/don't want it can just opt out of the program, but the floor is everyone gets to eat. I'd gladly pay more taxes even though my children aren't at risk.

adabyron3• 4 years ago

The little pickup baggie is a great idea schools should implement, especially children with long bus rides. Most kids are starving once they get home.

ljf4• 4 years ago

Over the summer holidays my office had free lunch bags for kids - your kids could come to the office, or you could take the bags with you. Any bags that weren't taken by 6.30pm were given away through Olio, so were with people who wanted them outside the business ASAP - they were collected by a local Olio rep, and with people how wanted them sometimes by 7pm.

Pretty cheap for our company to run - helped out parents who needed it, was fun for the kids that got to come in and then zero waste as it all went out to other local families if we didn't use it all.

nathan_compton• 4 years ago

Kids should be able to eat for free.

I believe the arguments against it are more or less: 1) I don't want to pay more taxes 2) Won't this make their parents less desperate and thus more able to choose their working conditions? 3) Will this encourage poor people to have too many kids? 4) I just don't like the idea of anyone getting anything without working for it.

gambiting• 4 years ago

>What, if any, are the political arguments against government-provided 3 square meals a day for kids provided by default?

Just the good old-school conservative mindset - that it shouldn't be the government's responsibility to feed your child. You had a kid, you should make sure they are fed. Why burden the taxpayer with this?

> I'd gladly pay more taxes even though my children aren't at risk.

A lot of conservatives would have a heart attack at just the thought of paying more taxes, even if it would benefit them or their kids.

Edit: Since this is getting downvoted for some reason - I just want to categorically point out that I'm not supporting this viewpoint. Just explaining it.

tomrod7• 4 years ago

I said this below in another comment, and I legitimately cannot imagine another story here:

People who complain about taxes going to feed children are social darwinists.

humanrebar7• 4 years ago

What, if any, are the political arguments against government-provided 3 square meals a day for kids provided by default?

Other programs could be a better use of resources and provide more support to parents. Like minimum income programs that make paying for lunch a non-issue.

Hypothetically, parents might want their children to follow certain diets for legitimate reasons, so letting them provide meals provides more support in those situations.

PuppyTailWags7• 4 years ago

Giving money to parents doesn't necessarily fix the problem of hungry children (this is not a slight to minimum income policies generally; I think all adults should be guaranteed a minimum quality of life regardless of if they've "earned" it, but I understand this is a much larger lift politically and will not necessarily fix everything). I want to fix the problem to hungry children directly by feeding them regardless of the parents capacity to feed them from their own wealth.

humanrebar7• 4 years ago

I'll add that a lot of conservatives would like to see more alternative schooling options, including grants to parents in lieu of direct funds to public schools. In those situations "school lunch" is just lunch.

throwaway220322• 4 years ago

You can't opt out of free meals provided via taxation because you're paying for them regardless of whether or not you use them.

If I'm going to give poor people money I'd much rather just give them money. There's a ton of literature on this producing better results.

TSiege• 4 years ago

Sometimes I think people have gone too hard into behavioral economics thinking.

The issue at hand isn't what is the best way to allocate resources. The issue is that we legally force children to spend all day at school 5 days a week, but we do not provide them food. If the government is mandating that, they are responsible for the children's safety and well being. One of the most basic parts of well being is being fed. There's a ton of studies that show that providing free meals improves test scores and behavior. It should be an option by default. And who cares if you don't use something directly, you benefit indirectly by having happier well fed children in your community

pessimizer4• 4 years ago

There's a ton of literature on this producing better results.

"Better results" here revolves entirely around what outcome you're trying to achieve. The better results you're referring to are that the easiest way to provide a better lifestyle for poor people is to give them money. I'd submit that the best way to feed children is to give them food.

denton-scratch10• 4 years ago

You can't opt out of free meals provided via taxation because you're paying for them regardless of whether or not you use them.

You're right; that's how taxation is used to provide public services. So ban all public services, and reduce taxation to zero.

That's what the new UK government seems bent on, and over just a weekend they've crashed into a lampost and written-off the car.

erellsworth• 4 years ago

I personally don't think there are any good arguments against it, but here are a few I can easily imagine hearing on Fox News:

- We don't want to use tax payer funds to give free lunch to children of rich people

- These types of issues should be handled by charities (by which they typically mean churches) not the government

- We already have food stamps, etc

tenebrisalietum2• 4 years ago

What, if any, are the political arguments against government-provided 3 square meals a day for kids provided by default?

Why stop at meals? Why not have the government just raise your kids? Then X, then X2, then socialism.

0xbadcafebee2• 4 years ago

Some day I'd like to find out why people are so terrified of socialism.

tenebrisalietum2• 4 years ago

To clarify these are not my arguments, but just an example of an argument.

wollsmoth5• 4 years ago

Whatever the US does now is lower quality food meeting some basic nutrition standards. Often kids don't like it from what I hear. People probably are mad that that's what kids are getting despite it being pretty cost efficient. There's a general cynicism that putting more money in the program would result in better food.

There's also a broader school funding issue, at least in the US. I think that just breaks down to people don't want to pay to educate other peoples kids. It's really short sighted and selfish.

giantg219• 4 years ago

"I think that just breaks down to people don't want to pay to educate other peoples kids."

It might be that they don't agree with how the money is currently spent. I see a lot of waste in my area. There are also some odd or overly restrictive policies. One can agree with the goal of funding of education while disagreeing on whether the current money is promoting that goal or being wasted.

giantg219• 4 years ago

I think the arguments might be the cost/taxes (including redundancy of SNAP/WIC etc) and the lack of freedom around diet. This includes options like kosher, vegan, allergies, etc, but also being forced to eat "healthy" (whatever the politicians decide that is).

It seems to me the SNAP, WIC and food bank route is more compressive, provides better freedom, and can offer better quality.

PuppyTailWags7• 4 years ago

I don't understand why the default meals being of arbitrarily minimum quality should mean that no default meals should be provided at all. I'm asking why can't meals be offered regardless of parental ability to provide. SNAP, WIC, food banks all depend on parents. I am asking why can't the schools provide regardless of parents. If the kids don't need it they can simply not take it.

bombcar6• 4 years ago

I would steel man the argument against that the "lunch program funding law" is almost always connected with various other funding that is perceived as worthless, $50 billion for school pork and administrators, $5 million for lunches type of thing.

SllX3• 4 years ago

As a general rule parents are responsible for their own children that they have in all societies, by default. That’s part of the responsibility of having kids.

Taking too much of that responsibility out of parents hands makes it less consequential for them to have children, and puts the public on the hook for individual choices. Inevitably that will lead to rising costs and I would put money down on someone somewhere coming up with really inane ideas like one-child policies or licensing down the line, either because of the rising costs or using them as a fig leaf to cover up their real political stance against population growth (because we’ve socialized one of the largest costs of having children and made it cheaper for would-be parents who otherwise wouldn’t be able to afford the responsibility to have more children).

I’m still in the camp of holding parents responsible for their choices, and I’ve suffered the consequences of my mother’s choices. Not every child’s upbringing is going to be happy or occur under ideal circumstances but that’s part of life too.

EDIT: I should also add, none of this is commentary on the UK’s political scene. I don’t have a stance on their domestic societal concerns which is what the original story was concerned with. Just addressing the parent’s question.

celticninja• 4 years ago

Taking too much of that responsibility out of parents hands makes it less consequential for them to have children

If you are a parent you would know this is BS. Sending them to school and feeding them at school is hardly a significant consequence. Its not like if free school meals come along everyone is going to start having more children.

Also children are required by law to be in school. I am not opting out of my parental responsibilities by sending them there.

Further, your whole point is that it may make it easier for people to have more kids so we should not do that, even if the cost is children (who had no say in their birth) having to be hungry and suffer through choices of their parents (who birthed them) and the government (who require them to be in school). Sounds to me like you want to punish the children for the mistakes of their parents.

conductr4• 4 years ago

I think a lot of this is solved if you make the parents pay that can. For example, if I pay $3 for a meal that cost only $1 to prepare then they can feed 2 other kids with the “profit”. Only people with kids should pay. Childless people shouldn’t bear the burden even though they benefit from fed kids. That keeps the politics at bay.

The kids shouldn’t know anything about it. Who’s really paying and who is not. It also needs to work as a large network so that 100% paid schools subsidize 100% free schools.

yamtaddle5• 4 years ago

(because we’ve socialized one of the largest costs of having children and made it cheaper for would-be parents who otherwise wouldn’t be able to afford the responsibility to have more children).

Food is really, really far from being one of the highest costs of having children. I guess maybe it's the highest-cost thing that isn't one of the high-cost things, if that makes sense.

Housing, healthcare, and childcare (= lost wages & benefits if a parent stays home, so still incredibly expensive) are so far ahead of everything else that most of the other typical expenses barely matter as far as the "have a kid or don't" decision. Healthcare in particular is the one you're taking out a reverse-lottery-ticket on every time you have a kid. They come out with serious chronic health problems, congrats, your annual spending is now 20+% higher indefinitely. And a decent chance you'll be declaring bankruptcy pretty soon.

We could have fed each of our kids for several years just from the medical costs of their entirely uncomplicated pregnancies and births. And we had insurance. Above-average insurance for our area, for a couple of them, even.

[EDIT] US perspective, of course. Some or all of these three very-expensive categories are taken care of by the public, to one degree or another, in ~all other developed states.

taylodl• 4 years ago

That's a fine sentiment in the civilized world but here in the United States women's bodies are controlled by the government - and so is their decision to have children. You got impregnated by a rapist? Sorry, tough shit! Then whenever it comes time to actually support the children they forced to be born they come back with this it was your choice to have the child so it's your responsibility to care for it! Grrrr! That really grinds my gears!

artificialLimbs• 4 years ago

I hope mine is not a political argument, but a rational argument instead. I'm not actually sure what would be the definition of a political argument. Nearly anything involving the government ends up being unreasonable and illogical.

It's not free, someone has to pay for it. The method is taxes, backed up by government violence if you don't pay. The government never pays for anything, in fact. You do. And I do. So if 'government' pays for kids meals, OTHER PEOPLE who may have decided to not even have kids are now partly responsible for your decision to have kids. In what universe is this even remotely ethical OR rational?

Good on you for deciding to 'help others', but not everyone wants to or necessarily can do that, and why should you be the arbiter of what is right wrt someone else's money? Forcefully taking someone's money through government taxation is theft through threat of violence. This kind of program would be incentivizing people who apparently already can't care for the children they have to have more children.

PuppyTailWags7• 4 years ago

So if 'government' pays for kids meals, OTHER PEOPLE who may have decided to not even have kids are now partly responsible for your decision to have kids. In what universe is this even remotely ethical OR rational?

My life will directly benefit by the wellbeing of the humans around me. Less children stealing for food means less criminals on my streets and in my neighbourhood. Kids who aren't hungry will act out less and can learn better. Well-educated next generation will pay for me when I'm retired. It's a simple investment in my opinion.

ljf4• 4 years ago

Well fed, well educated kids will one day be looking after you or the services in your community. Kids with a poor upbringing may well be a further cost on your community now and in the future.

Don't you want to spend a little now for a better society tomorrow?

andrekandre3• 4 years ago

  > Forcefully taking someone's money through government taxation is theft through threat of violence.

theft is a legal construct defined (and punished by)... the govt...

  > but not everyone wants to or necessarily can do that, and why should you be the arbiter of what is right wrt someone else's money?

do you use public roads? who pays for that?

golergka• 4 years ago

Taxation, and tax-based redistribution is wrong even when it's used for a good thing.

The society has a moral obligation to feed it's poor, but government should have nothing to do with it.

alistairSH2• 4 years ago

Conservatives literally believe feeding kids will spoil them.[1]

1 - https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/08/free-lunch-doesnt-sp...

BitwiseFool2• 4 years ago

This is a highly partisan and very underhanded article. It posits that "Conservatives" believe this, yet the article's source is: "According to one school-board member, children could “become spoiled.”".

Literally one school-board member said this, and now a broad brush is being used to insinuate that this is a widely held conservative viewpoint. Then they decided to trot out an "expert" in order to debunk this one person's opinion.

commandlinefan• 4 years ago

Every conservative I've ever met has been a member of a church that falls over itself to provide food to needy families as often as possible.

clusterhacks• 4 years ago

I live and grew up in the mid-Atlantic US area. You would be surprised at the number of people who will express deep distrust and even disgust at government programs for poor people. I have heard, many times, about how these programs are "taken advantage of" by people who "made bad choices" and "why should we support people who won't support themselves."

A very specific example - I had a close relative who was adamantly opposed to subsidized housing. This was despite working in the food service/hotel industry directly with people who earned too little at work to afford housing in the area without help. This relative could easily express the idea that her employer paid very little and ruthlessly limited work hours to avoid having to pay benefits (like, you know, health insurance) but not connect how her co-workers had to live in subsidized housing because they simply didn't earn enough (ever in their lives) to afford any other choice.

I suspect some similar thinking around providing a better meal plan for kids. During the pandemic, my (relatively wealthy) school district did provide free breakfast and lunch for all students. However, that was based on COVID federal grants and has expired. Students can still apply for free and reduced price meals and even in our "wealthier" district around 17% of students qualify for those programs. This roughly tracks our state statistics which report around 20% of families with kids in schools have problems with food insecurity.

We have a deeply conservative state legislature. The state itself has very large disparities in income and poverty based on area. I am honestly not particularly well-informed on free and reduced meal plan numbers in different areas. It is unclear to me if it is "politically viable" to provide additional subsidies or financial support to those poorer districts.

jandrewrogers• 4 years ago

The quality of the food is highly variable depending on locale. The reality is that some locales will be serving low-effort junk food for all three meals (all the California schools I went to were like this) and others will be served hand-cooked meals made by grannies (a couple rural schools in flyover country served free meals this way -- quality was excellent).

I frankly don't trust the government to provide a healthy diet on a consistent basis, their track record is remarkably poor in this regard. I don't have an issue with the idea of free meals, many locales already have something like that, but the execution is quite another matter.

nineplay• 4 years ago

Pragmatic answer:

It's really hard to figure out how much food is needed without creating huge amounts of waste. Our school district had free-for-all lunches and dinners for the last couple of years due to covid. Take as much as you want, no questions asked.

It resulted in a huge waste of food. I was at one distribution spot daily and they'd be cheerfully pressing bags on me, "Take one! Take ten! It will all get thrown away otherwise" On taco day I'd grab a few because one kid liked them but that was it. Even with the ones I took, the apples got throw out and the chocolate milk got thrown out.

This year it is only free lunch and the kids have a lunch code, so at least they know that they don't need more than the number of students at the school. I suspect there are still a lot of leftovers at the end of the day. Most of the kids I know still bring their own - the biggest beneficiaries are working parents who don't have the energy to pack lunch every day.

There could be government agencies that hand out something like MREs I suppose. It wouldn't be very appealing and I'm sure there would be lots of complaints, but it might keep people from starving.

ThrowawayR2• 4 years ago

"There could be government agencies that hand out something like MREs I suppose."

Not advocating for or against what you're saying but a ration of the type you're suggesting does exist: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humanitarian_daily_ration

mtalantikite• 4 years ago

For those curious, the Black Panther Party was one of the major drivers to getting the free breakfast programs going in schools across the US. The FBI of course hated that, but what we have today is largely thanks to their organizing efforts. [1]

And as others have commented, there seems to be little reason not to provide at least two meals a day to kids in schools. Besides "it's socialism" from those that seem to hate other humans in need.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Breakfast_for_Children

selimthegrim• 4 years ago

They also got many black judges appointed at the state level in California.

krapp• 4 years ago

The fact of the matter is, if all American schoolchildren were white, school lunches wouldn't even be controversial.

sublinear• 4 years ago

Any difference can give rise to discrimination.

It would just move up to the next least expensive items such as books, transportation, etc. Would schools even need to exist if everyone was the same?

mensetmanusman• 4 years ago

So sad. Almost a million people in the UK living off less than £7k per year is surprising.

3qz• 4 years ago

In Canada we don’t feed kids at school. If a kid doesn’t bring lunch, it’s their parents fault. If that happens frequently it’s considered child abuse. Lots of elementary schools here (mine) don’t even have a cafeteria!

I was surprised when I found out that we’re one of the few developed countries that doesnt have any kind of lunch program. I feel like our system works fine though and since I’ve seen the garbage that American children are fed I think it’s actually better this way

socialismisok• 4 years ago

Why is the best way not "provide a healthy meal (or two) in a centralized way"?

Cafeterias can produce healthy meals efficiently and cheaply, compared to distributing that labor to every parent.

And then you don't need to monitor kids for parents not providing meals, which eliminates a whole cost.

And worst of all, no kids should have to not eat because their parents fucked up. It sets them so far behind. Every meal a kid misses is a failure on all of us.

goalieca• 4 years ago

I feel like our system works fine though and since I’ve seen the garbage that American children are fed I think it’s actually better this way

I'm canadian and i'm always tired of this smug "we're better than the americans" attitude. It's quite ignorant of the facts and lazy to addressing our problems.

rvieira• 4 years ago

In Canada we don’t feed kids at school. If a kid doesn’t bring lunch, it’s their parents fault. If that happens frequently it’s considered child abuse

Why is this system better than:

Feed kids at school. If a school doesn't do it it's their fault. If it happens frequently the director is fired.

koolba• 4 years ago

The other social benefit for free school meals is that all the kids eat the same food together at the same table. Literally breaking bread together with no class separation. That pays dividends on all sides for years to come. It’s a real shame this isn’t a universal thing.

elsquid• 4 years ago

I have told my wife and maybe one other person about this in my life. The most trouble I was ever in during my childhood was for being caught stealing food from the school cafeteria.

My parents were too proud to admit they needed help, and certainly not from the government, so I had none. The school didn't have any empathy either. I stole lunch (and as much as I could eat because it would probably be all I ate) every day for almost an entire school year before they caught me. They knew how much was missing over that period of time and put it all on me (no idea if I was the only one doing this).

I hope they help these kids.

Schools in England warn of crisis of ‘heartbreaking’ rise in hungry children

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