A Slice of Bread and Butter
The voice of The Bread and Butter Thing - with stories from the frontline of the cost of living crisis from one of the UK's leading food charities.
A Slice of Bread and Butter
Food insecurity in schools: One headteacher's mission
Tucked away in leafy Cheshire, Broken Cross Primary's Headteacher Donna is leading a quiet revolution in how schools support struggling families. Like so many schools these days, it offers so much more than education. With nearly half of its pupils qualifying for free school meals, Donna's team are trained to spot signs of need to make sure no child slips through the cracks. Join Mark and Vic as they chat with Donna about the growing pressures on working families, why Bread and Butter is such an important part of their school community and of course, their adorable school dogs.
Welcome back to A Slice of Bread and Butter with Mark and Vic from the Bread and Butter Thing. We're a charity that delivers affordable food into the heart of deprived neighbourhoods to help nourish communities and act as a catalyst for change.
Speaker 2:We provide access to a nutritious, affordable range of food, which means our members can save money on their shopping, feed their families healthily, as well as access other support too, right in the heart of their communities.
Speaker 1:And this is where we share a slice of life of somebody involved in the bread and butter thing and hear about how they connect with us.
Speaker 2:Yep, and this was Donna, and Donna has a lot to say and is a tour de force.
Speaker 1:Inspiration would be my word.
Speaker 2:Let's have a listen to Donna.
Speaker 3:My name is Donna Lewis and I am the headteacher at Broken Cross Primary Academy in the history in Macclesfield. So Macclesfield is about 20 minutes on the train outside Manchester. It is an area of relative wealth. We are surrounded by Alderley, edge and Presbury, so we are in footballer territory. As a result of that, people don't realise that there are pockets of high deprivation and we are in one of those. We are 49% free school meals and much higher levels than National have sent Special educational needs and disabilities. So we pride ourselves on the fact that we are a community school and as a result of that, we have become a school of choice for many families where children need additional support and nurture.
Speaker 2:What does that deprivation look like for your families then? Because that sounds really hard, especially when you've got so much affluence around you.
Speaker 3:What it has looked like in the broadest sense for our community has been in the past, perhaps a sense of shame and embarrassment, because if they would say to people which area of the town that they lived on, there would often be a sense of I would have that from my teachers when they first started working here. We would say the school that we work in, and you would get a oh, that must be hard, which often felt quite patronising and you think well, it shouldn't be any harder than going anywhere else to work. So I think it has looked like an idea that we are less than or worse than I think. In practical levels it means that we are supporting families who some of those families who perhaps always been reliant on benefits to top up their income, but certainly what we've seen in the last three or four years are many working families with two parents who are working who are now finding themselves in that sort of category literally as a result of the cost of living increases.
Speaker 2:What you're seeing is, I guess, what we're seeing more and more working families being affected by cost of living and, frankly, falling under that food insecurity line, I guess.
Speaker 3:And where thresholds from benefits and other things haven't increased.
Speaker 2:They've dropped below the line, but the system isn't there to catch them or hold them I guess you could tell us what that looks like from a school's perspective, for things like free school meals then so, as I say, we are 49 free school meals as a school, which again is high nationally, but it's certainly for the area that we work in that's the high level.
Speaker 3:we run a a breakfast club free breakfast club every morning and we feed about eight children a morning with breakfast. We have more than eight children attend because children will eat at home. But what we're also providing within that is free childcare for working families. If they can't work, they don't earn and if they're paying an extortionate amount for childcare, the first couple of hours of work money is taken in childcare. So we have seen children not coming to school and when we phoned families to ask why, they're telling us it's because they couldn't put the heating on so there's been no hot water for a bath. Send them in, we don't mind. Or that they couldn't wash clothes, bring your laundry and we'll put it through the washing machine down in nursery.
Speaker 3:Families reaching out in crisis, and I think what we've seen in the past is families where, because of the shame that they feel and that's not something that we would ever want them to they almost leave it until things have almost got too bad before they reach out for help so we can provide on the spot food parcels, which we do quite regularly. We can provide on the spot food parcels, which we do quite regularly. We can provide breakfast parcels. But in my safe I've also got 15 pound tesco's and aldi's vouchers so that if you need to go and shop in that moment, you can. The thing that we can't help with is fuel poverty in that direct sense of funding. But what we try to do is if we, if you don't have to spend the money on food, you can spend your money on fuel. So it's kind of trying to support them to free up money for the other things they're the two headlines right food and fuel yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 3:You know, and I think within that we talk about food, but then we're also talking about the healthy element of the healthy eating, and you see a lot in the media. You hear a lot about oh well, they seem to be eating plenty. Look at the size of them. That's because what they can afford is a very worse kind of food that's packed full of calories, that's massively processed. And it isn't because they're eating loads, it's because what they're eating isn't the kind of quality we would want them to be eating.
Speaker 2:It's the quality of calorie. It's really interesting. I'm having a lot of conversations at the moment because, with the food strategy coming up for 2025, they're talking about using food insecurity as one of the metrics, but they're still not looking at the quality of calorie yet. Yeah, and that's really important. Right, because you'll see it every day, there are kids that are coming in with the wrong type of calories, that don't look malnourished, they look more obese.
Speaker 3:Yes, and that's it. And so it feels almost as if, when you talk about food insecurity and food poverty, that well, it can't. It can't be true. Look at the size of them. It's an absolute indicator of it. It is about it's packed full of calories but it's completely lacking in nutrition. Anecdotally, but we've just had a change of suppliers for our kitchen, for our catering, and we've seen an increase in the quality of the food, and even that, as a head teacher, I monitor the quality of the food that's coming out of there Because, again, I need to ensure that that's of a good enough quality and that there's enough of a range of salads and fruit and vegetables for the children to have.
Speaker 2:Do you think you're out of the ordinary or do you think most schools are like this Because you're taking a belt and braces approach right to making sure that the kids are getting healthy food?
Speaker 3:I think most schools are probably providing some form of support, I think for us here as a school, we're very open to it and our families are very open to it. We work very hard not to judge and to put across the fact that we don't judge people. And my concern would be that I think there are schools where perhaps there's a level of naivety possibly for want of a better word where perhaps schools aren't recognising the things that we recognise, that those families that have slipped into a situation that they've never previously been in you think about the increase in mortgage rates, the cost of if you've got two cars that are both on finance, all of that spare money has been taken, and I think there is a level of concerning me personally that perhaps in some schools people aren't quite as aware.
Speaker 2:Tell me about your bread and butter journey.
Speaker 3:It came about with just a very quick conversation with Graham Brown, who works for CBS in Macclesfield.
Speaker 3:It was an off the cuff comment almost from him about the bread and butter thing and about venues and I went, oh, we'll do it, because I am known for going oh, we'll do that, it's fine, I'll have one of those.
Speaker 3:We were more than happy to run it out of school, but also to run it out of school and serve the wider community, not just our school community. Part of the reason for that for me was about the destigmatization and, as I say, the whole relationship then came about very quickly, which is what I loved about it, because often in education when you work on things 18 months later and you're still waiting for it to come down the road and I think this took about three weeks, which was wonderful for me because I kind of quite like the buzz and the excitement of that and it was really exciting. And to be able to establish it before the summer holidays because I think we started in the June meant that then I could do that through the summer holidays and we knew that families were going to have access. Holiday times cause great anxiety for us.
Speaker 2:I'm sure. So what has it done? Have you seen any changes in the school?
Speaker 3:So it arrives at lunchtime, so six children volunteer every week. We have a group of volunteers who come down and help pack. I think it starts to break down those barriers and it de-stigmatises what's happening, because that would be the purpose for us constantly. And I think what's been lovely, we've seen the impact on our families, because what we will do obviously it runs during the working day, but if you're a part of a working family that's not going to work for you is our families can send the money in and we will hold the shopping for them. So that means that we're seeing families, that the working families are getting access to the food.
Speaker 3:What's been lovely is seeing the word spread and seeing families come on board, perhaps families who were reluctant or had this idea that it was all going to be poor quality, which it absolutely isn't. The added benefit of community volunteers who aren't attached to school but have started to come in and volunteer, breaking down some of those ideas of isolation and loneliness. You know, there's the benefit of the cross-generational effect of my young people supporting the community but older people within it. I think the benefits are. There's a multitude of them as far as I'm concerned.
Speaker 2:Did you guys used to run, or do you still run, a food bank, and has it had any impact on that?
Speaker 3:I think one of the things we were concerned about was that there are food banks in other areas of Macclesfield but there was no access to anything like that over within the community that I serve.
Speaker 2:So there was no food clubs in Macclesfield.
Speaker 3:Well, there were in other areas, but what we find with many people in our community is, you know, many of them don't have access to cars. We've got lots of single families and there's an anxiety about going somewhere new. One of the benefits for us of hosting it in school is that we used to come into school. School was a familiar face and in the holiday times my staff volunteer to do it. I try to be about, my deputy head will try to be about. So there's always a familiar face there for people and I think that familiarity really helps to break down barriers brilliant.
Speaker 2:We see that time and again, by the way, which is why we do the hyper local thing, coming to places like yourselves, because actually people don't feel confident of stepping out of their own communities. Yeah, and then we kind of turn it around and say well, and why the hell should they have to go out of their own community to access affordable food?
Speaker 3:Absolutely yeah. And then what you tend to find and we've got it in our community here is the shops that are then placed locally are very, very expensive.
Speaker 2:Very expensive or the wrong type of food.
Speaker 3:Or poor quality food. Yeah.
Speaker 2:You seem to be on a journey as well, or on a mission, yeah, mission probably. Yeah, what's driving you, donna? Why do you do it?
Speaker 3:Why do I do it? Because when I started at school nine years ago, there were 64 pupils here that included nursery. It requires improvement.
Speaker 2:Just for context, how many pupils have you got?
Speaker 3:229. And we're now sat on not that it's the be all and end all, but we sat on a good offstead with the notification on it that they felt they'd seen enough that we might be outstanding. Now that, from a community pride perspective, is huge. I am very much that schools should be embedded within communities. We are part of a community. We don't educate our children to leave their community. We educate our children to enhance the community that they live in.
Speaker 3:I'm really passionate about that because you should never feel shame about where you're from and I think hope is very hard to come by at the moment. I always say hope's not a strategy for a start that will solve nothing, but actually hope's quite hard to come by. If we can provide some elements of hope to people and let them know that people care, I don't think there's anything better that we could be doing. And if I look at it from a purely practical point of view as a head teacher, if we don't have food anxiety, if we don't have the anxiety around for children if they're going to have enough to eat and for parents if they're going to have enough to feed the children, I'm going to get better outcomes. You know, that's not the reason I do it, but there's a truth to that statement as well.
Speaker 2:So we're talking a lot at the moment, Donna, about something that we call hidden help, particularly focused around working families, because if you are a working family and you start to struggle, it's not always clear where to go for help and support.
Speaker 3:Absolutely, because you're not used to it. That's not the arena that you've been in, so you know we leave open lists on our website who they can approach If they want us to do that. My pastoral care lead will do those approaches and introductions for you, so there can be a lot of social stigma for them. So that's about us saying this isn't about anything you have or haven't done. There are lots of people in this position, but we're here to help.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because I do think you're right that stigma is a big thing and it shouldn't be. If people are working, and they're working hard, and they're earning a wage that doesn't stretch, doesn't cover, they are the people that we should be supporting, because they're doing everything the government and civic society wants of them.
Speaker 3:And it's still not working for them, and that isn't, as you say, for want of anything that they are or aren't doing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and we're kind of looking at it and saying, well, why isn't there auto-enrollment for social tariffs on broadband or social tariffs on energy? Because we know who's slipping under the net. You know, you only have to look at hourly wage rates and say anybody under that hourly wage rate should be automatically, should be qualifying.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it feels like a no brainer from the outside and I think sometimes it's really frustrating because I think we see what appear to be quite simple solutions to problems, but it feels sometimes like people make it really complicated for this I don't know why, almost for the sake of it I do see that a lot with governmental organizations.
Speaker 2:You said it earlier, working in education. You can see it takes 18 months to do something. Yeah, yeah it's ridiculous.
Speaker 3:You know, most of the things that we're talking about doing or changing is on. Most of it sits around mindset, and I think I'm fortunate because quite a number of my staff come from this local community. So, again, I think representation is really important and representation can take lots and lots of different forms. Some of my staff, much as I'm ashamed to say it, are very low waged. I don't set their wages. They are worth far more. So they use the bread and butter thing Fantastic. But I think that kind of thing locally, within our community, again, is a great leveler and it's that message that we mean what we say. We're not just saying it, we don't pay lip service to it. This is for everybody.
Speaker 2:We started this about eight years ago now, and when we first started, people used to tell us about what they would spend the money they'd saved on, lovely stories coming out about how families that couldn't afford to send their kids on residentials etc could. That feels like it's gone. This cost of living has bitten harder and harder and what we see now is actually all of the peripheral benefits of, shall we say, the additional income. It's not there.
Speaker 3:And you see it in the massive anxiety of something as simple as something going wrong on their car. You know you'll see a family walking in and you say, oh, if you walk this one and they go, oh, the car needs fixing, I'm getting it done in a couple of weeks. And what you know they're actually telling you is that's when they're getting paid. And there is, and what you know they're actually telling you is that's when they're getting paid and, as you say, there are no savings If your boiler breaks or if your washing machine goes or something like that. They don't have it and we see the impact of those things definitely.
Speaker 2:I believe you're very passionate about free school meals.
Speaker 3:I am very passionate about free school meals. Yes, because I think universal free school meals, I think you know sounds wonderful. But I know when my children were at school they wouldn't have needed free school meals. My sister's children wouldn't have needed free school meals. And I worry again that the threshold is so low at 7,400 to qualify for free school meals. That, and suddenly you know, you come into year three or you're eight years old and suddenly you don't need that food anymore. How can that be the case? I just don't understand it. You know the universal credits thresholds need aligning. I have staff here who earn the same wage. One qualifies for free school meals for her daughter, the other doesn't, and I do not understand why that is the case. Absolutely, I want the threshold raising. Where do you think you would put it? I would be putting it something like 12 and a half, 13, 14,000.
Speaker 2:So double it.
Speaker 3:It absolutely needs doubling. If you focus in on what's increased the most, it is food that's increased the most. These increases aren't level across the board, but they're very much weighted on the absolute necessities.
Speaker 2:Yeah, We'll go back to it. Right, it's the two. It's food and fuel.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and I don't like the narrative that people should do without everything in order to be able to afford to feed their families. I really hate when you see them. If they can't afford their children, why have they had them? Well, maybe four years ago they could afford their children. They've not changed. The situation around them has changed and it's changed for everybody.
Speaker 1:I'll never forget the first time that I met Donna Go on Well, so we had some funding to set up some hubs in schools to help families during the summer holidays, and I was put in touch with donna because, well, like you say, she's a tour de force. I went into the school and said right, donna, this is what we do. What do you think? She was like absolutely, I'm taking you on a tour. Meet, meet the dogs, meet the kids.
Speaker 2:Oh, you got to meet dogs without me.
Speaker 1:I did. Have you met the dogs?
Speaker 2:No.
Speaker 1:Oh, the dogs are fantastic. They're two old boys that lie underneath the kids' tables while they're doing the sums and doing the reading and just give off the best vibe ever. So then we chatted about how we could make the hub work and I think three weeks later we were up and running, wow, ready in time for the summer holidays. Good to go Done.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, she said it herself right she loves bread and butter because we get stuff done like she does. The DfE really drive her insane. I could hear that.
Speaker 1:No, not more government bashing Mark.
Speaker 2:I don't think it was government bashing. I genuinely wasn't trying to government bash. This was literally she just likes our pace.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So it was bread and butter praising rather than government bashing, how's?
Speaker 1:that Okay. Yeah, she's brilliant and really, really cares about the community, and you can see that she wants to be a positive force for change for those families that she just wants to go the extra mile for, and you see that through every part of school. All the classroom doors are open, which is amazing. It just feels like one open place. You just hear the passion in her voice, don't you, when she's talking.
Speaker 2:You can hear how much she cares about not only the school but the community around that school as well. I mean, she said it herself, didn't she? She didn't want the kids getting an education just to move off and get a job elsewhere. She wanted them to come back and invest in that community around there yeah, and like things like getting the kids volunteering yeah, we have a number of schools that do that and it's brilliant.
Speaker 1:I love going to those hubs yeah, and the kids are kind of packing the fruit and veg bags and then they're taking it home and they're feeling proud because they've been part of it, which is really important. I think sometimes the kids are the real good influence at home. Don't put that in the bin. We can still eat that and let's try it because I packed it.
Speaker 2:So why do you think we end up in so many schools Vic?
Speaker 1:Because having good food is just the precursor to being able to think well and learn, and so many of our families are not in the position to provide their children with that. And a breakfast club or maybe a free school meal or not, if you just miss out on the threshold isn't going to cut it. So the schools, I think, feel a responsibility to help their children be in the best place possible to learn. And you see this by talking about Rachel at Dalham too, Rachel at Dalham Primary. She's very similar to Donna in many ways she is. They just can't live with the fact that they've got these children that have got basic things lacking in their life. You know, and Donna was saying if the parents can't afford to wash the clothes, they'd rather not send the kids in. She's like give them to me, I'll put them through the nursery washing machine. How fantastic is that.
Speaker 2:It was amazing the number of things that she just rattles off as it's just par for the course, right, even the I'm the one checking the food that's coming out at dinner time and making sure that it's the right food and it's got the right nutrition, etc. Loved that there are so many people that can learn from this stuff, because I'm quite sure there's a lot of schools out there that don't do that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so different schools have different challenges.
Speaker 2:There are some schools like dalham and broken cross I think I'm learning that I'm the ranty one now and you're the diplomat maybe I'm just on a you know, I don't know thoughtful friday, not sure.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so people like dalham and broken cross and others, free school meals aren't enough, breakfast clubs aren't enough so this is like bread and butter reaching parts.
Speaker 2:Others can't, because we will use a school if there's very little community volunteering going on in the area that needs support yeah, but I think we also work out of schools to make sure that parents get really easy access to us.
Speaker 1:So, whilst we're open to the whole community in that area, the school community is on their doorstep, they're familiar with the place and it's increasingly important and you see this through lots of think tank, information and research that's carrying on that, the half program and free school meals and stuff. They're just not enough. And us being able to empower parents to put food in the fridge is fantastic. And it brings me back to that quote we got in the annual survey in December. That said, bread and butter enables me to feed my girls more healthily and they don't even know what's going on. I've paraphrased slightly and that bit for me is so important that parents can let their children live an innocent life and not be worrying about money or kind of have a biscuit when they're five. That's really important.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and we've heard that before, right, so we've had people on the podcast that have talked about that. A three-year-old daughter in the supermarket with mum shopping. Mum puts biscuits in the basket and child is stopping her saying do we really need these? Because they know they're on a budget.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think Donna touched on you know how do we make things easier for parents and for the community. So can we have free school meals for everybody? Can we raise the threshold? Can it be an opt out rather than an opt in? How do we really shift the dial, Because we know our members have got a lot going on.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:They're already juggling a lot of things, and then to fill out that form or to have to opt in is just another job on a long to-do list.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's fascinating, isn't it, when you actually listen to Donna and she said just double it. Yeah, just double the threshold. That just goes to show you just how far away from where it needs to be Free School Meals is.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and she doesn't have to think long about that. This is something that's going around in her brain all the time. Yeah, her chat with you was so full of anecdote and information you can tell she's living and breathing this and how inspired she is by the people that she's supporting. To do more and go further is just brilliant.
Speaker 2:As is she.
Speaker 1:Yeah, totally.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so we also touched on things like auto-enrollment for benefits for low-paid workers, because if you're in a low-income household but you're working and you don't have those touch points with the benefits agency or whatever, you don't get the right information coming back through. Do we? This is us talking about the working poor, again right. And how do we get the right communication coming back through? Do we? This is us talking about the working poor, again right? And how do we get the right communication of the benefits? Because I am deeply cynical that it's deliberate that these benefits are hard to access. Yes, this is government bashing, but it's every government, it's not just a labour government bashing. Vic in my defence, yeah.
Speaker 2:I've got a very diplomatic answer that I'm not going to say because it's just yeah, yeah, maybe you're having a better Friday than me. Who can say?
Speaker 1:Not so sure. Anyway, genuinely, the access to support comes across at every hub, with every age group, with every stage of life. It's not unique to families, it's not unique to pensioners, pregnant women getting healthy start. Someone has to recognize that as a systemic issue. It's a huge cohort of the population that are contributing a lot to society and really deserve a little bit more Agreed. The other thing that Donna touched on that was really important was about stigma and how she works really hard to break that down and how the bread and butter thing aligns with that, us not having any eligibility. You don't need a referral, you can come as often or as little as you want. That quite often sits really nicely in a school environment. It aligns with that inclusive ethos, which helps build the community too. So if you'd like to know more about the bread and butter thing and what we get up to, you can find us at Team TBBT on Instagram, twitter, tiktok, linkedin or online at thebreadandbutterthingorg you remember TikTok I did.
Speaker 2:I'm learning and if you have any feedback or thoughts on the podcast, you can get in touch with us by email at podcast at breadandbutterthingorg, and, by all means, if you want to come on it, drop us a note.
Speaker 1:Nice. Lastly, we're always open to new members at all of our hubs. If you or someone you know would benefit from our affordable food scheme, you can find it at your nearest hub on the become a member pages of the website and please do all those things that podcasts normally ask you to do.
Speaker 2:You know like us subscribe, leave us a review, share us with your friends and chat about us on your social channels.
Speaker 1:Nice, that could include tiktok, yeah very good, so see you next time, yep.
