An exclusive Good Morning Britain survey this week revealed one in six parents with kids on free school meals in England say their child has gone to bed hungry this summer.
GMB’s findings also show that children are going to bed hungry three times a week on average during the summer holidays and half of the parents surveyed said they had gone to bed feeling hungry too. Almost nine in ten parents with kids on free school meals said the summer holidays have been more financially difficult than last year due to the cost-of-living situation.
During the summer holidays, many councils in England offer vouchers or cash payments to help those families with children on free school meals. However, rising food costs have driven down the value of the vouchers, leaving cash-strapped families struggling.
Former government food advisor Henry Dimbleby and GMB correspondent Michelle Morrison, who helped carry out the investigation, joined Rob Rinder and Charlotte Hawkins in the studio on Thursday’s programme to discuss the issue affecting so many.
Henry commented: “It’s grim this but it’s not particularly surprising, we’ve got huge cost of living increases and people’s money hasn’t increased as much. There was already stress on families and household budgets, that’s increased. The problems, it’s both kind of an acute short-term and long-term problem.”
In a clip, a mum-of-two Kirsty Lawler told the programme how she and her family are struggling: “My five-year-old the other week, he opened the fridge and said ‘mummy, we’re poor’ and in reality, we are because the money I get weekly is meant to be for food shopping and bills and it’s not covering either of them anymore.”
As a result, nearly half of parents surveyed are worried about their child’s health due to what they’re eating this summer. A fifth are worried their child is not eating enough and a just under third are worried the food their child is eating is unhealthy.
Discussing potential solutions to the problem, Henry commented: “It is a bit of a mess. The vouchers first of all are spread across different parts of the government, the department for working pensions, schools… There is no data available for uptake of these schemes over the summer and responsibility is spread across government so we need somebody in government to take control and government should be producing this data.”
Good Morning Britain weekdays from 6am on ITV1 & ITVX
