We bin 1.9 millions of tonnes of food, so why are we letting children go hungry during a global pandemic?
Sunday //
If you ever went hungry as a child there is a chance you feel the Government’s decision this week, not to feed children receiving free school meals in the school holidays, during a global pandemic, mid recession, was desperately cruel. It is never a child’s fault that there is no food in the house.
When I was a child I didn’t get free school meals. Instead I often went hungry because my mother was too proud to ask for help. I was lucky though, by 12, at secondary school I had a home-economics teacher, Mrs Warren, an angel in a white chemistry coat, who had taken me under her wing. She taught me how to cook, how to shop and how to budget and in no time at all I would cash up our child benefit at the Post Office on a Tuesday after school and go to the supermarket - if I waited till Wednesday my mother would have cashed up the money and spent it on anything but food. One time she put the money down on a designer suit. Mental health illness shows up in many ways! I think my mother was grateful I’d taken control of this part of our lives. I could feed me and my brother on than money. I also told his school there was no money at home and somehow he was given free school meals without our mother applying for it. I didn’t tell my school though, I was already planning my future and didn’t need the complications. I’ve always played the long game.
I don’t often talk about the poverty I grew up in because it was a long time ago and I have never wanted anyone’s pity and you know when I was at school I just wanted to be as normal as I could be. I had enough stress at home, I didn’t want to spend all my time out of the house talking about it. I can, have and will survive pretty much anything and I’ve a deal with the Universe now, if I trust her she’ll take care of me. So far, it’s a good deal.
A child’s life chances are determined at the age of two, so imagine growing up knowing one cares about you? That the adults with big jobs won’t protect you? My confidence in a strongly worded letter started early. At 8 I wrote to my former foster parents and Bromley Social Services, on my best letter writing paper too, informing them my home life was terrible, living with my mother was not working out and could someone please come and get me. Those letters are in my social services files so I know they got them. The adults with important jobs held some meetings and decided to wait and see if I contacted them again, and that as it had only been two years since I was returned to my mother it wasn’t enough time for a relationship to develop - what? When no one came I knew these adults were shit and I was on my own. I started counting down the days when I could leave ‘home’.
Children should be able to trust adults, adults should always believe children and no child, especially in one of the richest economies in the world, should go hungry. Adults with big jobs needs to do their jobs. Children need to do their jobs; have fun, learn, be curious about the world, have birthday parties, build confidence and learn to take up space.
When we fail just one child we fail a generation and it’s just so unnecessary, there is enough for every child, if some children get a bit more than their share because their parents are taking too much does it actually matter if it means the most vulnerable have enough? I don’t think so but I write as someone who has been there, someone with lived experience of poverty and as someone who would never not share what I had with someone with nothing so we both could prosper. I also write as someone who worked on the policy to enshrine the ‘right to food’ into Scottish and Welsh legislation and spent three years working with FareShare the largest food charity in the country. Anyone going hungry in this country is a political choice - 1.9 millions of tonnes of food is wasted by the commercial food industry every year - that’s supermarkets not selling all their stock, restaurants not cooking everything they brought, factories making mistakes in packaging and not being able to sell stock and farmers over growing crops. We have enough food in this country for everyone but we’ve turned food into an industry where profit is more important than people. In most of Europe it is illegal for commercial food retailers and suppliers to waste food, they must donate their surplus to charity. Some countries even have a system where surplus food is used to make meals for all the state run facilities like schools, hospitals, care homes and prisons. Imagine that, adults organising a system that saves the tax payer money, reduces waste and improves the environment. Guess which two countries didn’t want to sign up the to world targets to reduce food waste - the UK and America - no one is surprised are they?
We should remember, when we don’t look after a child and leave them to suffer the consequences of adult decisions, that child might grow up, return and burn our house down. Our prisons are full of children failed by the State. The cost on society of simply not feeding children, who have no money of their own, or giving them frameworks for emotional security far outweighs the cost of extending free school meals, while the adults with big jobs work out acceptable government policies that lift people out of poverty and provide food security for the most vulnerable.
Anyways, enough with the talk, someone pass me the matches.