It’s lunchtime at a high school in Denbighshire, north Wales, and the aroma of cooked chicken fills the canteen as a dinner lady in a pinstriped apron puts food on to plates. The line of children who are waiting to be served a chicken burger, beans and chips builds around the hall.
The children are here for a free school meal but those queueing won’t be going to lessons afterwards because they are being fed during the summer holidays as part of a scheme that has been boosted by £500,000 from the Welsh government .
The investment comes after a report by MPs this year said up to 3 million children across the UK risk going hungry in the holidays. This summer a record number of food banks across Britain have called for donations due to growing demand during the school holidays. And the problem of holiday hunger came into sharp relief in Wales when a food bank in Swansea ran out of stock.
In Prestatyn high school, student liaison officer James Williams says:
Parents say that having lunch is a huge help for them. Without this some children won’t get meals with the same consistency they do during term time. This is one way for us to guarantee a young person gets two meals a day.
The school’s programme includes meals, visiting speakers and sports activities. Once a week family members join the children for lunch. It has cost around £14,000 to run the scheme during the holidays with, on average, 65 primary-aged children each day in the hall. The Welsh government has given £4,250.
The school ran a pilot last year that helped 25 children, and it hoped to expand the scheme this summer by drafting in different staff and sourcing money from its free school meal budget. I don’t think we could have done it to the capacity we have without the Welsh government funding,
says Williams.
Angela Evans and her son Mathew, 11, enjoyed the lunch club and activities at Prestatyn as she says it helped him make new friends ahead of secondary school.
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The Guardian – Wales takes bite out of children’s holiday hunger