UNICEF UK launches first-ever domestic food insecurity response to feed hungry children

17 Dec 2020 --- UNICEF UK has launched a domestic emergency response to food poverty within the country for the first time in its 70-year history.

Children in the Central London district of Southwark with restricted access to free school breakfasts will receive healthy breakfast boxes over the Christmas period, made possible by UNICEF’s funding.

The £25,000 (US$34,000) grant allows community project School Food Matters to supply 18,000 nutritious breakfasts to 25 schools over the two-week Christmas holidays. 

“Our Breakfast Boxes program has shown us that the threshold for free school meal eligibility is too low to capture all the families in need of support,” says Stephanie Slater, School Food Matters founder and CEO.

“That’s why we’re getting behind the National Food Strategy call for an extension to free school meal eligibility. We cannot continue to rely on civil society to fill the hunger gap as too many children will miss out on the nutrition they need to thrive.”

School Food Matters will deliver 18,000 nutritious breakfasts to 25 schools for distribution around the Southwark borough.Breakfast for Christmas
The Breakfast Boxes program is part of “Food Power for Generation Covid,” a joint initiative with Food Power, Sustain’s food poverty program that aims to reach 1,800 food-insecure Southwark families. 

Each breakfast box will provide enough food for ten breakfasts, containing fresh pineapple, oats, desiccated coconut and rice in addition to wholemeal bread, baked beans and milk. 

UK retailer Abel & Cole will also be providing 1.2 metric tons of fruit and vegetables worth £4,500 (US$6,100) to include in the boxes.

The Breakfast Boxes program will also continue over February half term with an additional 6,750 breakfasts.

UK struggles with food access for children
The UK government began providing food vouchers over the six-week summer holidays to households eligible for benefits-related free school meals. The “Covid Summer Food Fund” cost the government about £120 million (US$152 million), in addition to a previously announced £63 million (US$80 million) local authority welfare assistance scheme. 

These funds are necessary considering the major impact of restricted access to school food has had on children’s development. 

A UK-first, UNICEF has moved to develop a domestic emergency response (Credits: Adrian Pope/School Food Matters).A study conducted by Northumbria University’s Healthy Living Lab found that half of the UK children on free school meal programs significantly dropped their fruit and vegetable intake and increased sugar drink consumption since schools closed in March. 

The UK government has been combating food insecurity in children since the pandemic’s first wave in March. At the time, School Food Matters had also called for more detailed food security assistance.

In response to UNICEF’s emergency response, Angela Rayner MP, the UK Labour party’s deputy leader comments: “The fact that UNICEF is having to step in to feed our country’s hungry children is a disgrace and [Prime Minister] Boris Johnson and [Chancellor of the Exchequer] Rishi Sunak should be ashamed.”

“We are one of the richest countries in the world. Our children should not have to rely on humanitarian charities that are used to operating in war zones and in response to natural disasters,” she maintains.

Insufficient government funds to fight UK food insecurity has been criticized as a “disgrace.”Humble beginnings
The Breakfast Boxes program launched this May, distributing 51,782 boxes to school children in Lambeth and Southwark. 

“The response to our summer Breakfast Boxes program has shown us that families are really struggling and many were facing the grim reality of a two-week winter break without access to free school meals,” says Slater. 

“By providing our Breakfast Boxes, families know that their children will have a great start to the day with a healthy nutritious breakfast.”

The coronavirus pandemic is the most urgent crisis affecting children since the Second World War, says School Food Matters. Even before the pandemic struck, an estimated 2.4 million UK children were already growing up in food-insecure households.

“Charities and businesses across the country have done a brilliant job stepping in where the Government has failed, but it should have never come to this,” adds Rayner. 

NutritionInsight previously spoke with Slater on rising obesity rates in UK children, who called for stricter government regulation.

Edited by Anni Schleicher