Universal Free School meals

I knew kids of well off families who would be looking to come back to ours after school because their packed lunch did not keep them fed until both their professional parents could get home and get the dinner on.

These were good parents working under pressure paying mortgages and long hours / commutes .

I was lucky in my job , I could change my hours to suit my growing families needs eg finish at 3 or 4 to get home and cook a dinner .

Did mean I might have to work some nights or late evenings / weekends but we worked it out myself and himself .

But not every working parent can do those odd hours/ shorten that commute .

And often they give their kids money to supplement replace the packed lunch but we all know that can be spent on rubbish or other non nutritious things.

Hungry kids, wealthy or poor , is not what any reasonable person wants in this day and age .

I support it .

Like free school books for all and universal child benefit it will float more boats and help reduce child poverty just a little bit .

I would also be in favour of applied supports to those that need FIS and BTS payments .

My view is that all schools should be providing cooked meals to children. This is not about some mythical "government control" or a nanny-state absolving parents from their responsibilities. I can make the best cheese sandwiches and sliced veggies for my kids, don't you worry. But cold sandwiches are not proper food, and eaten 5 days a week for more than 10 years are bound to have a detrimental effect.

Anyone know what their kids are being served?

The options for our school tomorrow are:

• Roast Chicken with Mash, Seasonal Veg and Gravy
• Leek & Potato Soup with Soft Brown Roll
• Chicken Curry on Rice
• Mexican Chilli Beef Wedges
• Chicken goujons with wedges and peas
• Vegan Atlantic goujons with wedges and peas

One needs to be chosen in an app before 10pm tonight. The app has photos of some dishes, but not all. The full list of ingredients of each constituent part of the meal are available (e.g, what the wedges are made of, what's in the gravy), but they don't give a nutritional content breakdown of the meal as a whole.

There's basically a 3 week menu that then gets repeated, so my kids have already put in their orders for the first 3 weeks, then they'll make some adjustments based on what they liked or didn't.

Different schools are using different providers (each school chooses their own one), so the menus and process could be different.

We're a week and two days into it now. Two kids in 4th class. One is kind of fussy, one is a bit of a foodie. Only complaints so far are that the portions aren't huge, one didn't like the tomato soup, and the other accidently ordered vegan spaghetti bolognaise instead of beef. But she still ate it.

It's a good idea for all kids in all schools, I see our Taoiseach Simon Harris taking credit and photo opportunities etc., what a man

The app our school is using asks you to check off allergens from a list when you're setting up the kid's accounts. You can update it then once the account is made.

Every dish on the menu lists the allergens (wheat and gluten are mentioned separately. I haven't looked at all the dishes, but I've seen dairy and soya beans mentioned too) , and there's icons to show if it's vegetarian, vegan or halal.

My kids don't have any dietary requirements, so I don't know what options are presented to you if you do have an allergy or intolerance.

Oh, there's a note at the bottom of each day's menu that says

Allergen blocking functionality only applies to schools where pre-ordering is available thourgh the app. For purchases from the canteen, please consult the allergen handbook on site or ask a member of the catering team.

I assume the company who provide the free lunches also (or previously) provided paid-for catering in schools. I also assume that if you've entered an allergen in your profile, that you're not offered dishes containing that substance. But I don't know if you're then offered an alternative or not.

If you are providing family support, and the families still aren't managing to feed their kids, then it sounds like you are not doing your job correctly.

Oh FFS!

What do you propose @Mrs OBumble ?

Get the state to take the children from their parents because in your eyes they are failing their children? I wonder did we ever try that before in this state!

At the end of the day, there are good parents and bad parents. We don't live in a tyrannical dictatorship where we can whip kids from their parents because they fail some parenting test.
Instead what we can do is make sure kids get school books, an education, a hot meal and so on. Programs like these work as per international studies show.

It sounds to me you would open up the Mother and Baby homes again and fill them with kids because parents are failing them.

Yes. Indeed .🤨

This is what this is ..

without the singling out of individual children /families as requiring support .

What I remember (another northerner here - I didn't know free school meals weren't a thing in the south) was that somebody - maybe Thatcher? - made school meals much more expensive for all but the families on free meals, with the result that the rest of us started bringing in sandwiches, and some of the kids on free meals just stopped going because they wanted to eat with their friends. I know that because my best friend was one of them - and I know she wasn't the only one. We used to share our sambos with our friends, but I'm sure their parents would have been really annoyed if they'd known.

Same here in Manchester 50yrs ago

A team of dinner ladies serving hot meals in primary school everyday

They got so many things right over there . It's a shame the way they're gone

We had that too. The parents paid for the milk.

Meat and veg, menu options being only yes or no? Maybe it worked 40 years ago, today they need to cater for halal, ramadan, vegetarian, vegan and all the rest of these notions and nonsenses, and that's before you consider real issues like allergies and intolerances.

The hot meal my kid started to get after Easter is decent enough, he liked most options and he's a fussy eater. You order online for the next week and there are plenty of options.

Is it free? Nothing really is, even if you don't pay for it directly. If you pay taxes, you pay for it.

Yes in lieu of a meal scheme we should mass confiscate children from their families.

Lunacy.

It's more like airplane food than freshly cut fruits and vegetables. But it's hot food, not deli, see below a snip of a ~45 items list.

Yes, that system was there about 150 years ago. Any child seen on the street could get picked up. A real pity it went out of favour.

This is based pretty much on comments from social worker friends: hunger drives kids to ask for help. Feeding them outside the home makes it a lot harder to identify who needs help.

Jesus of all the nonsense arguments I have read against this very simple and effective scheme that is number 1.

My son was in a deis school at one point. They had a breakfast club for the kids , many of which had nothing to eat going to school. My lad went for the chat. They also had free lunches.

Effective at covering up shít parenting so it's not so obvious kids are being neglected.

But they ARE being neglected, and ye seem to think that's OK.

It's not.

But they ARE being neglected, and ye seem to think that's OK.

No I don't, what a horrendous thing to say to anyone, you should be ashamed of yourself.

It's a great idea it would be nice if it's not torn to bits by the food nazis accompanied by endless articles in the media saying the meals should be sugar-free, fat-free, salt-free ect, it's a good news story.

The free school books is another good new story that's not getting much attention.