Going hungry for summer

Earlier this week, the last schools in England which have been holding out for the summer holidays will finally come to the end of the summer term, my wife's among them.

This will not be welcome news for some parents, not just because they now have to look after their children instead of dropping them off at school, but because their children will not have their school meals.

Many families are in receipt of free school meals for their children, and for some children, the breakfast or lunch their children get may be their only cooked meal of the day.

This summer, a record number of families will find themselves struggling to feed themselves.

Food banks are being used in record numbers, driven up by austerity which has led to freezes in pay at the same time as rising costs, growing number of zero-hours contracts which reduce the unemployment rate but don't guarantee high levels of pay, and changes to the benefit system leading to delays.

Some schools are staying open partially in order to continue to provide some sort of meal. This is fairly shameful that millions of children are living in poverty.

Find your nearest Food Bank to support here.

If you have a chance, drop a few tins and other items into the food bank collection point which is likely to be in your local supermarket if you can...

Image: Alan Parkinson, shared under CC license.

Trussell Trust website

The Trussell Trust website has been updated substantially, and is now a really excellent source of information on food banks, and the nature of the support that is offered from these places, which are seeing growing usage over recent months and years.

We have a shopping trolley in the school reception, and regularly take it over to the food bank near the school… a daily reminder to all who pass it that not everyone has food security.

Food Banks

I wrote about Food Banks four years ago as part of a CPD unit that I wrote for the TDA which is available on the GA website.

In previous years, these have become even more common, and there are now thousands of people in the UK who rely on help to feed their families.
This New Statesman article is helpful too in outlining some of the issues around this option.

Will there be even more people relying on Food Banks in the future ? The latest news on energy prices is not good news, but not unexpected.

Recently a child poverty map of the UK revealed a range of extremes of children's lives.

And last week, my local paper had a headline about child poverty too, as shown to the right...

A good focus for discussions on 'development indicators' perhaps...

Food banks

In 2010 I spent quite a bit of time working on a resource to help teach about the issue of FOOD.
FOOD is perhaps the most important "living geography" topic, and I am currently working on a project to write some materials for the IB Geography specification - take a look if you haven't done already at Rich Allaway's Geography all the Way website to see what he's doing in the way of resources.

As part of the unit that I wrote on Food Security, I included a section on food banks in the UK, and the work of the Trussell Trust.

The unit started with the resource above....

The idea is that students might expect the description to refer to a family living in certain parts of the world, but would not naturally expect it to be a family in the UK. Now, it looks like food banks are going to become even more important, and the work of the Trussell Trust even more so....

This BBC News article describes one family's problems with the rising cost of living. As a result of this they had to turn to a food bank for support.

There are also more stories on the Trussell Trust website, as well as advice for how to help.

The newspapers are always using stories on the issue of food prices and the impact they are having, and it would be well worth starting a collection of those for the time when you teach about food.
This is also an issue which needs teaching with sensitivity, and the knowledge that there may well be students in the classes that you teach that go to bed hungry....