Shame and exclusion

Shocking new research has revealed the shame and exclusion UK children in food poverty face in school.

The stories behind the statistics on child poverty were thrown into sharp relief by a new report published by the Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG), which is among the first of its kind to hear first-hand from  low-income children about their experiences of not having enough food to eat.

Maddy, 16, explained the embarrassment she faces as a student on free school meals at her school, where students who pay for their school meals are given greater choice.

“When she [a staff member at the lunch checkout] was like ‘You can’t get that, you’re free school meals’, like I was really embarrassed ’cos people were waiting behind me, I was kind of like ‘Oh my God’,” she said. “And it’s like you’re really restricted to what you can eat with free school meals. So now I just get what I know I’m safe with … so a small baguette and carton of juice.”

Immigrant children from low-income families often fare even worse, because many haven’t lived in the UK long enough to qualify for public funds and so cannot access free school meals.

Gideon, 15, who doesn’t qualify for free school meals because of his family’s immigrant status, told researchers, “It’s embarrassing, yeah, you have no money on your card and then you just watch them eat.”

Not eating all day has a major impact on his ability to perform well in school, he says.

“Sometimes you don’t have enough energy, you cannot cope in the classroom so you have to try and rest a bit. You just put your head on the table and you end up falling asleep in the classroom and you get in trouble for it.”

Amara, 15, also a child from an immigrant family who doesn’t qualify for free school meals, reported similar experiences.

“When I’m hungry I just can’t concentrate, it’s really, really hard for me to do that … so I just need to make my mind up and know that I will eat after five hours, seven hours when I get home,” she said.

Others told of how their parents give up food so that their children have enough to eat.

“If there isn’t enough food, we’ll get it and sometimes mum will go hungry and starve and stuff,” Byrony, 13, told researchers. “Even if it’s not that much food for me and [brother], it’s enough that we’ve actually had something, whereas mum hasn’t, and it gets a bit to the point where we’ll start feeling guilty because mum hasn’t had anything and we’ve had it.”

Testimony from children living in poverty comes as new statistics from the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) published last week found that a record 3m children are living in working households in poverty after housing costs have been paid.

Separate figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) showed that nearly 900,000 children lived in poverty solely because of skyrocketing housing costs – a 30 per cent increase since 2010, according to an analysis from the National Housing Federation (NHF) of the data.

And as the number of children in poverty rises, their average age has fallen – now, 53 per cent of kids below the breadline are under the age of 5.

Holiday hunger 

Last summer, UniteLive reported from Mile Cross in Norwich, a ward where 80 percent of children are on free school meals.

There, we highlighted a local Unite Community free lunches project (pictured) aiming to tackle holiday hunger over the summer. The Unite Community branch gave over 500 packed lunches to children aged 16 and under and went on to host a similar project over the Christmas holidays.

The stories parents in Norwich told UniteLive mirrored those found in this week’s Child Action Poverty Group (CAPG) report.

“My husband works more than 40 hours a week,” Molly*, mother of two children aged 8 and 10, said.

“I still have to skip meals to make sure my kids are okay. I’ve worn the same leggings for five years,” she adds, smoothing over a frayed hole. “We’ve got a massive mould problem in our home but there’s just no money to fix it.”

Lucy, another parent of three daughters aged 8,9 and 12, added, “It’s shocking to see the difference in our family’s expenses in term time and over the summer holidays – there’s sorting out childcare, finding activities, but most of all there’s food.”

Unite Community national co-ordinator Liane Groves called testimony from the Child Action Poverty Group (CPAG) “haunting”.

“We cannot reduce conversations about child poverty to mere numbers, because behind these numbers are actual, innocent lives who are suffering from both the physical pain and emotional anguish of hunger.  This report is an important step forward in hearing the voices of these children who are excluded from society simply because their families are struggling to make ends meet.

“Unite Community has been clear from the beginning that tackling child poverty will require challenging government policies such as Universal Credit, which have plunged countless families into the abyss of debt and destitution.”

“Child poverty and holiday hunger are problems cynically engineered by this government’s cruel policies – it doesn’t have to be this way, and through our grassroots campaigning, we at Unite Community are committed to making sure it isn’t.”

*Names changed to protect identity.

• Pic: Peter Smith