Quarter of children from low-income families ‘go hungry’

A quarter of children from low-income families experience hunger because of restrictions placed on accessing free school meals, research suggests. Some children do not eat at all during the school day because, despite being severely deprived, they did not qualify to receive the benefit, according to Living Hand to Mouth? Children and Food in Low-Income Families, published by Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG), which follows 45 low-income families living in London and a seaside town in South East England. The research offers new insights into children’s experience of food poverty and its causes, CPAG claims. For example, some children, who came from the most severely deprived families, with no recourse to public funds as a result of immigration controls, did not eat at all during school hours. One 14-year-old pupil living in London told researchers at the UCL Institute of Education: “Sometimes you don’t have enough energy, you cannot cope in the classroom, so you have to like try and rest a bit. “You just put your head on the table and you end up falling asleep in the classroom and you get in trouble for it.” Read more.