Debate contribution: Holiday Hunger

Debate contribution by Ms Cara Hunter on 19 March 2024.

MLA

Ms Cara Hunter

Party at the time

Social Democratic and Labour Party

Date

19 March 2024

Type

Debate contribution

Business

Private Members' Business

Heading

Holiday Hunger

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 4279648

Read the official Assembly record

Text

First, I thank those who tabled the motion and the amendment. I also thank the groups that work so hard on tackling child poverty: Save the Children, Action for Children, Barnardo's and women's groups, to name just a few. They have continued to highlight child poverty and the impact of food poverty on young people. Children experiencing hunger outside term time is a significant concern. That greatly worsened throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. The extent of food poverty experienced by children can be evidenced in the large number of families not only struggling with the cost of living but having to attend food banks. I thank the Limavady Community Development Initiative (LCDI) food bank, which does a fantastic job in my constituency, and its staff in supporting families and young people. On visiting schools across my constituency, I have been told by principals and teachers, some of whom were about to retire, that, in their entire career, they had truly never seen poverty as they do now, and they feel that children experience the worst of it. Of course, food poverty ties in with adverse childhood experiences. For many young people, even though they are so young, they can really feel the financial stress that is on the shoulders of their parents due to their inability to access food or have a lunch like their peers. That is an important point to add. The school holiday food grant scheme was a crucial lifeline for vulnerable families that ensured that children had access to nutritious meals during school holidays. The initiative acknowledged the stark reality faced by many households across the North where financial strain worsens food insecurity outside term time. For numerous children, school meals represent their primary source of balanced nutrition, making the absence of those meals during holiday time such a concern. The scheme bridged that gap, offering essential support to families who might otherwise have struggled to afford sufficient nutritious meals. Over a quarter of families in the North with children who attended school were eligible for the grant: well over 90,000 children were entitled to that. We see an acknowledgement of the impact of food poverty when we look at things such as the NHS Healthy Start scheme's recognition of the need for nutritious meals for pregnant mothers and for young children. Therefore, it is really important that we are having today's debate. There are so many challenges affecting working families, including the cost-of-living crisis. The withdrawal of the funding will have a disproportionate impact on low-income families and on children who have a disability or food allergies, for example. Due to inflation, the cost of food that is dairy-free or gluten-free continues to rise, and that can cause challenges. I know from the constituents who contact my office daily that that struggle is real. The rising cost of childcare is coming at the same time, which causes immense pressure. Research has shown that some low-income families in Northern Ireland have to spend up to 46% of their weekly income to afford healthy food. That is a shocking statistic. Families have to account for what they spend on breakfast, lunch and dinner every day. The scheme provided a much-needed degree of comfort that could help those parents to relax a little and know that money was coming in to support the feeding of their young people. Even when I was shopping last night, I saw that the cost of things such as fruit is through the roof. I met a childcare provider who said that they had to limit the number of berries because they could not stretch to feed children in the way that they could maybe a year or two ago. The cost of living continues to provide such stress for so many. I spoke to mothers of children with autism and sensory needs who like specific branded foods, and that can create even more challenges, especially if they have an additional allergy, for example. The scheme stretched beyond the nutritional value of meals for children and could empower parents to provide for the family without another source of stress. It provided them with a level of dignity that is, I know, impossible to put a price on. While I welcome the motion and the sentiment behind it, we must go further. This needs to translate into real and tangible legislation, with real support for real families who struggle every day. If this area is not legislated for, children will continue to go hungry and working families already struggling under the weight of inflation and childcare costs will have yet another issue to contend with. We need to do all that we can to tackle that. The SDLP will support the motion and the amendment. Today's debate speaks to the urgent need for an anti-poverty strategy. We know that one in four children in Northern Ireland lives in poverty. It is well past time that we tackled that, and we can do it together.

829 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

Assessment

Not flagged

Jev’s structured answers

Assessed 21 October 2026 at 09:53 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

Disagree with this assessment?

Classifications can be challenged. A person reads every challenge, and any change is recorded publicly above with its reason.

Challenge this classification