Foyle Network Foundation calls on NI Executive to Reinstate School Holiday Food Grant

Watch Foyle Network Foundation’s video about the School Holiday Food Grant here.

Foyle Network Foundation, as part of the Trussell Trust network, is calling on the Northern Ireland Executive to reinstate the School Holiday Food Grant, which was axed in 2023.

The grant, in place from July 2020, of £27 per child each fortnight was to help 93,000 pupils entitled to free school meals and their families during the school holidays. This funding supported the families of about 28% of all school pupils in Northern Ireland.

The withdrawal of the grant now means that Northern Ireland is now the only part of the UK where there is no support available during the school holidays.

8,843 emergency food parcels were provided by Foyle Food bank to people facing hardship across Derry in the past 12 months. Alarmingly 3,835 of these parcels were for families with children. This demonstrates the scale of the challenge facing families in Foyle this summer.

Karen Mullan, Director at Foyle Network Foundation noted: “We saw the impact of these cuts here at the Foyle food bank. During the summer months of 2022 and 2023, we saw an increase of 23% of families with children needing to use our foodbank. It’s vitally important that our children and families are supported during what will be difficult summer months.”

A local parent who has lost the School Holiday Food Grant mentioned how hard it has been since the cuts were introduced: “I should be able to look forward to the summer when the kids are off school. For many parents like me, summer has now become a time of stress and worry. This grant was a lifeline to me over the summer and now I really feel the loss of the extra support.”

Jonny Currie, Northern Ireland Network Lead at the Trussell Trust, said: “Families on the lowest incomes across the Foyle area are being faced with impossible choices this summer. The added pressure of providing more meals for children, as well as back to school costs, has the potential to plunge people further into poverty.”

“While the reinstatement of the School Holiday Food Grant will provide much-needed reassurance to families this summer, it is not a long-term solution. Going forward, we need the NI Executive to petition the next UK Government for the introduction of an Essentials Guarantee. This would mean everyone on the lowest incomes had enough to afford food, bills, clothing, and other essentials.

“Without the work of the team at Foyle Network Foundation, the community would be facing even more hardship. If you can support their work, visit their website to find out what food they are most in need of at this time.”

As well as reintroducing the School Holiday Food Grant, Foyle Network Foundation is urging the NI Executive to:

• Deliver a budgeted anti-poverty strategy with clear interventions that will end the rising need for emergency food in Northern Ireland;

• Prioritise policies that will protect people from poverty and destitution, including the full implementation of recommendations from the reviews of welfare mitigations and discretionary support;

• Call on the UK Government to implement an Essentials Guarantee, to protect people in receipt of Universal Credit from going without essentials.

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