Over the Easter holiday, many food clubs in the Feeding Britain network ran activity and food programmes to make sure children didn’t go hungry when their school was closed. The Health Lottery Foundation have donated £20,000 to Feeding Britain to allow them to support more families over the school holidays later this year.
A decade of tackling food poverty
Almost 80% of people that access the food clubs in the Feeding Britain network live with food insecurity. This means that they find it hard to access quality food to live a healthy life. The organisation estimates that 270,000 individuals have benefitted from their support over ten years.
Feeding Britain has a national network of 133 regional and local anti-hunger partnerships comprising more than 700 frontline organisations including local charities and community groups.
School holiday clubs are one of several programmes that offer nutritious meals and enriching activities, which improve dietary intake, mental health and reduce isolation. Last year 32,000 places were created for children to attend through the Healthy Holidays programme. This year the charity wants to increase that number to 50,000 places.
School holiday clubs – food and fun
In addition to providing nutritious meals, holiday clubs are a great opportunity for children to learn about food and to develop a healthy relationship with fresh produce. Cooking classes help children experiment with new foods, develop cooking skills, and, most importantly, have fun.
Children from low-income families are at greater risk of holiday hunger. Holiday clubs help fill the gap felt by the loss of free term time meals.
Feeding Britain shared feedback from a parent involved in a holiday club in Bradford, “The club felt like a holiday to my son because he was doing fun activities away from home with other children. It has been the highlight of his holidays to attend this club.”
Practical support backed by policy
Tackling food poverty is complex. We were impressed by the fact that as well as supporting families with access to better food, Feeding Britain is working with Government and campaigning for change.
The first Feeding Britain report was published in December 2014 and carried the findings of a national inquiry, into the extent and causes of hunger and food insecurity. The inquiry received evidence from hundreds of people and organisations across the UK. Since then, Feeding Britain has continued to monitor the root causes of hunger, reveal the hidden or less well-known aspects of food insecurity, and propose policy-related solutions to these injustices.
Andrew Forsey, the Director of Feeding Britain said,
“The best estimates suggest that a little over 200,000 children in poverty in England alone are eligible but not registered for their free school meal entitlement. Feeding Britain has worked with dozens of local authorities, with support from the Department for Education, to explore ways of maximising registration rates, and one clear recommendation has emerged: a national policy of auto-enrolment, covering both Healthy Start and free school meals, should be embedded in a single application form, which, when eligible families apply for universal credit, automatically signs them up for these two schemes without the need to fill in separate applications.”
Read more from Andrew on tackling child poverty.
£20K support from Health Lottery players
We have awarded the charity £20,000, which they will use to fund 1,900 more child places over the Summer and October holidays later this year. This is for projects in the northwest of England. We’ll report back later in the summer on how things are going. In the meantime, we encourage you to visit their website and follow them on social media.
Website: www.feedingbritain.org
Facebook: @FeedingBritain01
Insta: @Feeding_britain