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Food Banks in Schools and Nurseries

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Available Open Access digitally under CC-BY-NC-ND licence. During the cost-of-living crisis, schools and nurseries have had to step beyond their educational purpose to offer free food to families t...
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  • 18 February 2025
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Available Open Access digitally under CC-BY-NC-ND licence.

During the cost-of-living crisis, schools and nurseries have had to step beyond their educational purpose to offer free food to families through food banks. This book explores how these food banks operate, why families use them and how they affect children’s participation and wellbeing. Drawing on case studies of 12 primary schools and early years settings across England, it examines the impact on family wellbeing, home-school relationships and staff.

The authors argue that the situation will remain unsustainable if this welfare work continues to be unfunded and unrecognised, raising a significant question of who should and who can be responsible for alleviating child poverty.

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Price: $22.95
Pages: 182
Publisher: Bristol University Press
Imprint: Policy Press
Publication Date: 18 February 2025
ISBN: 9781447375524
Format: Paperback
BISACs: SOCIAL SCIENCE / Poverty & Homelessness, Poverty and precarity, EDUCATION / Schools / General, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Philanthropy & Charity, Education / Educational sciences / Pedagogy, Child welfare and youth services, Charities, voluntary services and philanthropy, Schools and pre-schools
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“This book is a powerful analysis of the recent growth of food banks in nurseries and primary schools – the 'responsibilisation of schools to address the problem of child poverty' as the authors note. Bradbury and Vince conduct a finely detailed analysis of how this situation has come to pass, what teachers think and feel about such provision, and what the implications are for the schools themselves and society in general of having schools reach beyond their core purpose. Required reading for anyone interested in the contemporary provision of welfare services.” Carol Vincent, UCL Institute of Education, emerita

Alice Bradbury is Professor of Sociology of Education and Co-Director at the Helen Hamlyn Centre for Pedagogy 0-11 Years (HHCP) at the Institute of Education, University College London.

Sharon Vince is Research Assistant at the Institute of Education, University College London and Lecturer in Education Studies and Early Childhood Studies at the University of West London.

1. Why research food banks in schools and nurseries?

2. How have the cost-of-living crisis, Covid and austerity affected families and schools?

3. How do food banks in schools work, and how did they start?

4. What is the impact of food banks on children and their families?

5. Why do schools have food banks?

6. Where is policy? Schools, responsibility and the withdrawal of the state

Notes on anti-poverty and food campaigners