Nearly 15% of Wiltshire's children skipped meals or had smaller portions during pandemic
That's according to new figures that have been released by the Social Market Foundation
The survey shows that between March and September 2020, 14.6% of children in Wiltshire faced "very low food security".
This means that there they had to make do with smaller portions, skip meals, or go a day without eating.
Nationally, their findings indicate that 14% of children were classified as facing very low food security.
Official figures for the pandemic won't be available until 2022, as the UK Government only started tracking food insecurity in 2019.
The Social Market Foundation wanted to fill this gap, so conducted a survey themselves.
The report says:
"The economic shutdowns of recent months, disproportionately hitting lower income households, have created fears that COVID-19 has made, and will continue to make, an already challenging situation considerably worse. In November 2020, the Legatum Institute estimated that 690,000 people, including 120,000 children, have entered poverty because of the Coronavirus crisis.
The figures presented in the report indicate that a large minority of children in the UK have experienced significant hardship over recent months. They suggest that the scale of the problem is greater than many might previously have imagined."
The survey indicates that 3 million children have faced some sort of food deprivation during lockdown, that's one in four.
SMF have recommended five policies to the government to held address child hunger and poverty further, despite the number of steps they have recently taken.
These are:
- Implement all recommendations highlighted in the National Food Strategy
- Bolster Universal Credit and the wider benefits system
- Coordinate and mobilise a national network of food redistribution
- Devolve responsibility and funding for on the ground food distribution to local authorities
- Introduce healthy eating programmes across all local authorities
They say child poverty and hunger has become "an urgent national challenge".