Holiday hunger: Families face challenges after food grants axed

Families of children entitled to free school meals face "challenges every single day" due to the axing of holiday food payments.

That is according to a parent of a child with special educational needs (SEN) who used to receive the payment.

Department of Education (DE) analysis found that cutting the "holiday hunger" grant has a disproportionate impact on disabled children.

The school holiday food grant ended in March 2023 to save money.

The grant of £27 per child each fortnight was to help families of more than 93,000 pupils entitled to free school meals with the cost of feeding them during school holidays.

The families of about 28% of all school pupils in Northern Ireland were eligible for the grant.

Northern Ireland is now the only part of the UK where there is no support available during the school holidays, although support has been reduced elsewhere, according to a recent analysis by BBC News.

Kayleigh Martin's four-year old son Karló has special educational needs and was entitled to free school meals when he attended full-time nursery.

That meant that, like the families of 93,000 other children, she had received £27 every two weeks during school holidays until it was cut.

"It made a huge difference," Ms Martin told BBC News NI.

"Because the price of food has gone up so much it was giving you that extra bit of comfort to know that you could provide what they needed nutritionally at home."

She said she had really noticed the difference in not receiving the payment over the summer.

"You're having to really account for what you're going to be spending on breakfast, lunch and dinner every single day," Ms Martin said.

"It was a great help when you were getting it because you weren't having to worry as much, but now you have to plan everything right down to the penny really."

"The cost of bread, milk, pancakes, yoghurts - those kind of things - that's all gone up in price."

She said every single day was a challenge with "very little support out there".

"You try and try and try every day and you just feel like you're banging your head against a brick wall," she said.

The Department of Education has just published an equality and human rights policy screening on the decision to discontinue the holiday hunger payment.

It said that "disabled pupils will be impacted proportionally significantly more than is the case for all pupils" by it being cut.

That is because proportionally more disabled pupils were entitled to the grant compared to the school population as a whole.

Black and traveller pupils were also disproportionately affected by payment ending compared to other pupils.

The DE permanent secretary, Dr Mark Browne, recently said that axing the grant was the most difficult decision he had to make.

The department's equality screening also acknowledged the cut "could have a detrimental impact on families' ability to provide a nutritionally balanced meal each day over the school holidays".

"This could have a damaging impact upon a child's diet and overall health."

However, the DE screening said that an executive anti-poverty strategy may recommend the resumption of school holiday food grant.

A previous expert report for the anti-poverty strategy published in December 2020 recommended "extending free school meals provision to include school holidays".

It also recommended an extra child payment of between £12.50 and £15 per week for children in receipt of free school meals.

But an anti-poverty strategy had not been developed before Stormont collapsed and would require executive agreement.