Under the line

One of my work colleagues has been living on £1 a day for all food and drink for 5 days. She is taking part in 'Live Below the Line' a global challenge to show solidarity with people in extreme poverty, raise money to eliminate global poverty and experience what life is like for people on very low incomes.

She had to plan how to spend her £5 very carefully checking what she could and could not afford to buy. She didn't allow herself to use her store cupboard except for salt and spices. Normally she eats a lot of fresh fruit and vegetables, these were immediately unaffordable, instead she bought a bag of diced frozen vegetables. She found that tinned potatoes were a cheap alternative to fresh. She also bought a bag of cheap teabags but milk was too expensive so she drank it black. She has found it an eye opening experience and very boring so is looking forward to return to normal after 5 days.

The Trussell Trust Newcastle West End food bank is now the largest in the country, since 2009 demand has increased 8,000% so it now distributes 4 tons of food every week. Everyone receiving food has been referred by a care professional such as doctors, health visitors, social workers, Citizens Advice Bureau staff, welfare officers, the police and probation officers who issue people in crisis a food bank voucher. Clients bring their voucher to the food bank where it can be exchanged for three days supply of emergency food. Food parcels have been designed by dieticians to provide recipients with nutritionally balanced food.

It is very hard to imagine why people would not prioritise buying food. The All Party Parliamentary Group on Hunger and Food Poverty, chaired by Frank Field found that the answer is simple. If you have limited income you will pay your rent first because otherwise you will be evicted. You will pay for gas and electricity otherwise they will be cut off. If your children are entitled to free school meals you know they will get one meal a day during the school day, families Children North East know will prepare one meal a day at teatime. During the school holidays they prioritise food for the children and the parents live on leftovers or go without.

A Christmas Carol

Charles Dickens famous story about Scrooge was published 171 years ago but is perhaps even more relevant today than when it was written.

Scrooge, a committed miser is shown the error of his ways by four ghosts who visit him on Christmas Eve. The final spectre, the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come shows Scrooge his own deathbed, funeral and grave. Scrooge is terrified to realise he will die alone and unloved, mourned by no one, and resolves to change his ways. Throughout the story Dickens shows us that redemption comes through the joy of giving, especially charitable giving.

At the start of the story Scrooge is visited by his nephew who remarks. 'I have always thought of Christmas time as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time; the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys.'

We are one of the richest countries in the world, we are home to some of the wealthiest people who have ever lived. During the second half of the last century we became a much more equal society than in Dickens's time but today income inequality is again greater than it was 100 years ago. No matter how much you have, and how 'fair' you think you should be entitled to everything you have, nevertheless we are all mortal, all on the same journey through life.

The next scene is a visit from two gentlemen who say. 'At this festive season of the year, it is more than usually desirable that we should make some slight provision for the poor and destitute, who suffer greatly at the present time. Many are in want of common necessaries; hundreds of thousands are in want of common comforts.' Adding 'Want is keenly felt, and Abundance rejoices.' Scrooge replies that the prisons, workhouses, treadmill and Poor Law are good enough for the poor.

Today's equivalents would again be prisons, Universal Credit and Job Seekers Allowance. But also the indignity of food banks, the benefits cap, the unfairness of the bedroom tax and mean-minded immigration regulations.

Scrooge is taken by the Ghost of Christmas Present to visit the homes of many families cheerfully celebrating Christmas. Finally the Ghost reveals, 'from the foldings of its robe, it brought two children, wretched, abject, frightful, hideous, miserable...They were a boy and girl.' Whom the Ghost calls Ignorance and Want and warns against ignorance in particular. When Scrooge asks what can be done to help them the Ghost taunts him with his own words 'Are there no prisons? Are there no workhouses?'

We do not see the Want in our society, we are no longer confronted by children with no shoes freezing on the winter streets. Instead the media serves up a spectacle of the poor as ignorant and lazy. We make judgements about other people's lives from the comfort of our own homes and convince ourselves that because we are fortunate to have work, family, friends, community it is somehow 'fair' that others do not.

At the end of the story Scrooge gives, not only to Tiny Tim but abundantly to all. He remembers and re-engages with the joy he felt at Christmas time when he was young and he laughs, 'really for a man who had been out or practice for so many years, it was a splendid laugh, a most illustrious laugh. The father of a long line of brilliant laughs!'

In the last two weeks Children North East has witnessed abundant giving from thousands of ordinary people all over our region who have bought and donated toys, gifts, food, clothing, treats and money for cooking and heating. We have been busy distributing them all to children, young people and families in need this Christmas. The Spirit of Christmas is very much alive and well right here in north east England!

I wish you all a very Joyful and Happy Christmas.

School dinners

A government-commissioned school food review has recommended Headteachers insist everyone has school dinners, that means banning packed lunches which the report says are often less healthy than school meals because they frequently include crisps, sugary drinks and sweets or chocolate. Headteachers are also encouraged to ban children from leaving school at lunchtime to buy food such as chips and pizzas from local shops. However the review also says that take up of school meals is only 43% despite huge improvements in quality in recent years.

There is good reason to be concerned about the food our children eat. Newcastle upon Tyne has more obese and overweight 4 year olds than anywhere else in England; and of the 2,300 babies born in Gateshead every year, 230 will be obese by the time they are 4 years old and 480 will be obese by the time they are age 10.

The Local Authority Caterers Association is very concerned about decreasing number of children choosing school dinners. If take-up dips below a certain point it will no longer be financially viable for school caterers to provide meals at all.

In our research to Poverty Proof the School Day we found many children and young people who are entitled to free school meals do not take them up because of the stigma it entails. For example we found a school in which children who had free school meals had to queue in a different line at lunchtime; in another school dinner money envelopes were collected in class on Monday morning, all the free school meal children had no envelopes to be collected. One school had a sophisticated biometric card system but the pupils knew who got free school meals because on school trip days they all got a standard school packed lunch in a brown paper bag. Children told us they preferred to go without dinner or nagged their parents to give them a packed lunch to avoid the shame of being identified as having free school meals.

Schools have taken the healthy food message to heart, vending machines that sold sugary drinks, sweets and crisps have been removed but we spoke to children and young people who told us they were all still widely available in school sold by enterprising young people on the 'black market'. One young person even made a video about it in our video stories project.

Then there is the mystery of the missing free school dinner money. If your school uses a 'credit card' type system for school meals you can top it up at the start of the week and spend against it, the remaining credit is carried forward day by day. Not so for free school meals, the notional amount for a free school meal is £1.90 if you spend less than that then tough, all you get is £1.90 again the next day. But no-one seems to know where all those unspent pennies go? And finally what does £1.90 actually buy in the school canteen - can you get food and a drink or must you go without one because you can't afford it?

Children North East supports moves to improve the health of children and young people especially healthy weights but the reasons why pupils chose not to eat school dinners are complex and need to be understood by listening to what the children have to say about them. It is only then that effective strategies to change behaviour will emerge.