Half A Million Hungry Kids
Prof Greta Defeyter OBE is Dean of Social Mobility Policy Engagement at Northumbria University, and Chair of Feeding Britain. A developmental psychologist by background, she has advised government on the impact of food insecurity, school breakfast clubs and holiday hunger.
Words by Greta Defeyter OBE
Editor Arlen Pettitt
Photography by Christopher Owens
The Holiday Activities and Food (HAF) programme provides nutritious meals, enriching activities, and free childcare places during school holidays for children from families on low incomes, who qualify for means-tested free school meals (FSM) during termtime. It is funded by the Department for Education (DfE) and administered by all higher tier local authorities in England.
The Healthy Living Lab at Northumbria University started researching holiday provision and holiday hunger prior to the introduction of the HAF programme and continues to conduct research on HAF.
In 2020, I led a number of co-design workshops to finalise the HAF framework, ahead of its nationwide rollout in 2021. Since 2022, the DfE has provided an astounding 15.6 million HAF days to children and young people in England and continues to provide £200M each year to fund these activities across England.
“In other words, the UK Government deems them poor enough to receive free school meals during term time but not during the holidays.”
Multiple studies have shown that HAF is a very successful programme against a range of social, health, educational and financial outcomes and offers exceptional social return on investment of £8 for every £1 invested in the programme.
The UK Government’s Child Poverty Strategy, launched last year, was most welcomed and I was pleased to see that it included the expansion of FSM to all pupils from households in receipt of Universal Credit.
Some of these parents/carers are on incomes as low as £7,500 a year. The extension of FSM was a well-informed decision which will see a further 500,000 children become eligible for free school meals in September 2026. This will undoubtedly help these families with the ongoing cost of living crisis.
However, the UK Government decided that, unlike existing means tested free school meal pupils, these ‘new, expanded’ FSM pupils will not be eligible to attend HAF.
In other words, the UK Government deems them poor enough to receive free school meals during term time but not during the holidays.
At this point I would like to remind the UK Government that one of the main reasons for the introduction of the scheme was to ensure that children who normally receive free school meals were provided with a free, nutritious meal during the school holidays, accompanied by a range of enriching activities. Provision of a nutritious meal, accompanied by physical activities, is the government’s own recommendation to reduce childhood overweight, obesity and malnutrition.
I believe, alongside my colleagues in Feeding Britain and the North East Child Poverty Commission, that not allowing these 500,000 children and young people to have the opportunity to register for HAF is socially and morally unjust and risks undoing the gains which should accrue, for children and young people’s development, from receiving term-time FSM.
Given the high level of child poverty across England, especially in the North of England, I call on the UK Government to reverse this pernicious policy.
I also call on MPs, and regional mayors past and present, to join us in that ask.
To show your support, please sign Feeding Britain’s petition and send the message to Westminster of how highly these programmes are valued, an how important it is to maintain the link between the HAF programme and FSM.
You can find out more about Feeding Britain here, and find out more about Prof Greta Defyeter and her work in our feature interview with her here.