Holiday food support for kids has become a “postcode lottery” - two Merseyside councils have scrapped food vouchers this Christmas

The provision of holiday food support for children has become a “postcode lottery”, according to a leading charity and two Merseyside councils have stopped offering food vouchers during the Christmas holiday.

This comes after the BBC’s Shared Data Unit found more councils stopped offering supermarket vouchers to families with children in receipt of Free School Meals (FSM) during the 2022 Christmas break.

The Food Foundation said it was “vitally important” all children eligible for Free School Meals had support during the school holidays.

But the Local Government Association (LGA) said some authorities simply could not continue to provide the vouchers, which came about following a campaign by England footballer Marcus Rashford, with the government grant funding they currently receive.

Introduced in October 2021, the Household Support Fund (HSF), gave unitary and county councils in England discretion over how to help financially struggling families in their area.  In the vast majority of cases, councils chose to continue offering similar voucher schemes to FSM-eligible families, alongside other forms of local support.

Some council bosses have instead decided to give grant funding to third-sector organisations such as food banks in their areas or to focus resources on the Government-backed Holiday Activities and Food (HAF) scheme.

BBC study

The BBC’s Shared Data Unit study aimed to find out how financially struggling families with children were being given food support over the Christmas holiday.

The BBC asked all 152 upper-tier local authorities in England whether they would be running a food voucher scheme for the families of children in receipt of free school meals as well as asking them, broadly, how they would be spending their allocation of the HSF. Details were gathered from 125 authorities, in part by seeking out information already available on council websites.

In August 2022, it was found that 21 councils are no longer running a voucher scheme or equivalent cash scheme, including Wirral and St Helens. 32 councils had also reduced the value of the vouchers compared to the previous summer.

The Local Government Association said the decline in the supply of vouchers could have been partly down to a rule change, which meant a third of each council’s HSF funding needed to be spent on pensioners.

All councils are offering Holiday Activities and Food (HAF) programmes.

Wirral

Wirral Council is no longer offering vouchers or cash to families with children in receipt of Free School Meals this Christmas holiday. The council runs a holiday activities and food (HAF) programme, and ‘thousands of places in more than 35 activity clubs across the borough are available for children in receipt of free school meals.’

A spokesperson for Wirral Council told LiverpoolWorld that its HSF funding is supporting the borough’s most vulnerable residents, through a package of projects, including Early Years food & essentials hampers during school holidays and food support for out of school activities.

St Helens

St Helens Borough Council is no longer offering vouchers or cash to families with children in receipt of Free School Meals this Christmas holiday. Instead, the council runs a holiday activities and food (HAF) programme, providing healthy food and enriching activities for primary and secondary school-aged children eligible for benefits-related free school meals.

According to the council website, the Winter Programme includes sport sessions, cooking lessons and a Christmas party.

What has been said?

Zoe McIntyre, school food project manager at the Food Foundation, said: “It’s vitally important that children eligible for FSM have support during all the school holidays. This will help ease pressures on hard-working families during holiday times who face rising childcare costs combined with soaring food and fuel costs while children aren’t in school.

“Local Authorities are implementing the Government’s Holiday Activities and Food Programme but this is funded to run for 6 weeks of the holidays (4 hours per day, 4 days per week) over the entire year so not all will be offering it across all of the holidays.

“We are particularly concerned that children who are not eligible for free school meals will not be eligible for free holiday provision either. There are 800,000 school-aged children in poverty who this will affect across the country. That’s why Feed the Future is calling for the Government to immediately extend Free School Meals to more children – this would ensure that these children no longer miss out in these particularly difficult times.

“Additional funding for councils comes from the £421m Household Support Fund, some of which is ring-fenced for families with children. However, not all councils are using this to supply food vouchers, and this creates a postcode lottery on who is receiving additional support and who isn’t.”

A spokesperson for the Department of Work and Pensions said: “Councils in England decide how money from the Household Support Fund can best be used to directly help those who need it most.

“More than £1.2 billion has been provided by the fund since its introduction last year and the Government has pledged another £842 million of funding from April 2023.

“We recognise the pressures of rising living costs, which is why we are providing wider Government support including £1,200 in direct payments already issued to millions of low-income households this year. Alongside this, we’re helping households with £400 towards their energy bills and our Energy Price Guarantee will save the typical household another £900 this winter.”