Almost one in three children in the UK live in poverty, resulting in hunger, insecure housing, and exclusion from developmental activities. Many pupils arrive at school with empty lunchboxes and rely on breakfast clubs, free school meals, and food bank donations to have enough to eat. Community initiatives like the Junction Multibank in Middlesbrough coordinate charities and companies to redistribute surplus clothes, furniture, and sanitary products, distributing 1.5 million items to over 224,000 people in under a year. Policies such as the two-child limit and the benefit cap reduce financial support for low-income families, storing up greater long-term costs.
With all children across the UK back in school as of this week, I am reminded that almost one in three are in poverty. That statistic is shocking enough but behind every number is a child, and what this statistic means is children arriving at school hungry, living in insecure housing, and missing out on the activities that help them thrive.
I visited a school in the north-east of England a couple of years ago where many of the pupils turned up with empty lunchboxes. There was a breakfast club that fed them on arrival. They were eligible for free school meals, so got a hot lunch. After school, trestle tables were set up in the playground laden with food donated from the local food bank. As they went home, they filled up their lunchboxes so that they could have some tea.
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