Dramatic rise in schools relying on charities to feed children

Channel Four reports:

A charity that provides free breakfasts to primary schools tells Channel 4 News it has seen a four-fold rise in its waiting list in the last four months, amid fears child poverty is on the rise.

The charity Magic Breakfast has been providing free breakfasts for nine years to UK primary schools where over 50 per cent of pupils are on free school meals.

But in the last four months, its waiting list has gone from 20 schools to 80 - and rising. The charity, which won a "Big Society" award last year, provides food for 6,000 children in 200 schools and is now struggling to meet the increased demand.

Founder Carmel McConnell told Channel 4 News: "All of those application forms from schools - it's stories of real deprivation, where kids are going home to empty cupboards."

FareShare, an umbrella organisation representing 700 food charities, has also reported a doubling of in demand for its breakfast club and youth services from 2008 to 2011...

According to a new report from the End Child Poverty campaign, one in three children - or almost four million - currently lives in poverty in the UK. What this means is that the children live in households where the income is below 60 per cent of the median UK household income.

And the forecast is that this is going to get worse. The IFS predicts that the number of children in relative child poverty will rise by 400,000 from 2010/11 to 2015/16, and that absolute poverty will rise by 500,000. This basically means that there will be another 100,000 children living in poverty each year...

The parents that rely on Magic Breakfast are from a range of backgrounds, said the charity's Mrs McConnell.

"There are some families who are looking for work and on benefits, and there are some families who are working very hard but not earning very much," she told Channel 4 News.

"The fact is that if there are jobs out there for many of our families, they're long hours for very low pay. So they're not going to be there in the morning."

Maria Olesen from FareShare also told Channel 4 News that the profile of clients relying on food banks and food charities has changed.

"Anecdotal evidence tells us that it's not always the clients who have always struggled - who are homeless or sleeping rough," she said.

"There are more and more single parents, families on low income, families where if the sole breadwinner loses their job, they have a huge drop in income. They are struggling to put food on the table - some people have to choose between heating and food."

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