She says: “It is a vital social support to low income families with regards to financial burden, health and wellbeing.
“However, during the long summer breaks, the issue of ‘holiday hunger’ has become a real concern, with food banks and community projects reporting more hungry families seeking extra provisions.
“Investment is needed for those 170 days of the year when our children are going hungry.”
She has just returned from the United States where she used a fellowship funded by the Winston Churchill Memorial Trust to research types of food provision, logistics, potential challenges, and community partnerships, as well as looking into how providers identify families in need of support.
The US Government is tackling the problem by funding breakfast and summer meals programmes throughout the country. They vary in size, location and delivery and are often run by volunteer providers called ‘sponsors’.
The US Department of Agriculture provides funding to community organisations that can support the programmes.
Graham visited a number of established and innovative summer meals projects in nine US states. The projects she saw ranged from small church-run community projects in Georgia, with 20 hot meals served in a family-style setting, to large truck runs in New York serving thousands of packed meals to queues of families all over the city.
She also attended a Senate hearing on the theme of ‘Meeting the challenge of feeding America’s schoolchildren’.
She said: “There is a real and urgent need in the UK for such a valued and supportive programme, and I hope that in the future our government will do much more to support the fledging projects run by charities, local authorities and food banks already underway.”
The report on her study tour, with recommendations on how such programmes might run in the UK, will be published in October 2014.