The following letter/posting comes from a CLICK4HP list member and is
being re-posted (from an earlier posting to another list) with her
permission. Please reply either directly to her at the below e-mail, or
feel free to engage in a lively discussion on this list!  Stimulating
discussion about health promotion perspectives is a primary purpose of
CLICK4HP and today we hae had a couple of items to consider related to
inequalities in health. Your comments are welcome!

Alison

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From:   Sherrie Tingley[SMTP:[log in to unmask]]
Sent:   Tuesday, September 16, 1997 10:04 PM
To:     [log in to unmask]
Subject:        Looking for Help- feeding children

Hi Friends,

I am writing to you looking for help on writing a couple things on
poverty from the perspective of women living in poverty. Often our
voices are rarely  heard in the 'expert discourse' on these issues. The
issues of Child Feeding Programs and the Federal Provincial Child
Benefit are ones that I think need to be addressed.

What has propelled me to this point that I feel we have to attempt to
use this electronic space to find our voices, is a number of things, the
federal/provincial report on the child benefit based on the overriding
assumption that people on welfare need to be forced to work and the
Women from the Canadian Living Foundation stating that the biggest issue
facing our country is the need for a  national breakfast program. (Not
unemployment, not lack of affordable housing, not lack of adequate
income, not lack of legal assistance for women to get the child support
they are entitled to, not women abuse, NOPE, a breakfast program)

My initial thoughts on the child feeding programs is that it is the
ultimate slap in the face for women struggling to provide for their
children.  It is very sick to be calling for a national program that
gives out freebies of sugar pops when we have lost a national housing
program and seen rates in Ontario reduced to a point where the majority
of children and other family members on welfare have $2.50 a day for all
their basic needs (including tooth paste, soap, school fees and food).

Other reasons it is sick include:

*It has no advocacy involved.

*It is not accountable to consumers

*It does almost nothing to address the real health ramifications of
poverty that impact both the children in families and the adults

*It is a totally inappropriate response to poverty

*Feeding our children is fundamental to parenting, what happens to us
when we are forced to rely on a breakfast program for some of our
children?

* The statement that children can not learn if they are hungry is the
sickest thing I have ever heard, does that mean we only feed them when
they have to go to school?  Does that mean if they could learn it would
be OK?  Does that mean other family members can starve, specifically
their mothers?

*In my local Board of Education with 43,000 students school fees and
fundraising are the norm. When the welfare cuts were announced, we met
with a school principal of the school that served the most children on
welfare to ask him to consider the demands on family income they were
making by asking for fees and holding WEEKLY pizza days. We told him
that many families put fitting into school first and a pizza day for two
children would mean that many family went for the week-end without milk.
WE got nowhere!

*How these feeding programs work in my community is that the church
'ladies' buy? bake muffins, teachers Identify? needy children and direct
them into the feeding program (parents are not told, either that their
children are being fed or that the opportunity for their children to be
fed is available due to concerns of fraud) The 'feeding children' must
troop off to the school basement in the morning (other kids laugh) and
get their muffin.  Charity- isn't it wonderful?

*We have asked time and time again both the board and the community to
explain this to us and gotten nowhere, they look at us with horror and
say: "You want children to go hungry?"  We have asked if the muffins
could not be available at a central location for the mothers to pick up,
we have asked and asked and asked and we have got nowhere.  They even
talk about the low rate of fraud in their program!!!!!!

Maybe there are good programs I do not know, and maybe there are
programs that include a recognition that housing and income are things
that must be addressed again I do not know.

But if we let these people and governments get away with implementing
feeding programs instead of providing adequate income to people in need,
are we not complacent in the torture of poor people?  Are we not saying
that women would spend the money we gave them inappropriately?

Feel free to forward to anyone who may be interested in this issue,
primarily women on welfare.

Thanks all,
Sherrie Tingley
Barrie Action Committee for Women
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