The Department of Education has announced that they are to scrap the School Holiday Food Grant (SHFG) alongside the Engage and Healthy Happy Minds programmes.
Under the Holiday Hunger Grant scheme, parents in receipt of free school meals received a payment of £27 per child each fortnight to assist with food costs during school holidays.
The payments had been in place since July 2020 but a long term plan to continue the payments to 2025 had not been agreed before the Executive collapsed last year.
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Announcing the cuts, a Department of Education spokesperson said: "Since July 2020 additional ringfenced funding has been provided to enable the Department of Education to pay School Holiday Food Grants (SHFG) on behalf of the Executive. From April 2023 this additional ringfenced funding has ended and therefore school holiday food grants can no longer be made.
“The Department recognises the important support the SHFG scheme has provided for low income families who are struggling financially, particularly with recent cost of living rises and realises the huge disappointment this will be for parents. It is with great reluctance that the Department is confirming that SHFG will be discontinued from 31 March 2023.
“While funding allocations have not yet been confirmed by the Secretary of State, the Department of Education is facing an extremely challenging budget.
“We will continue to work with other government departments and agencies in efforts to tackle holiday hunger in the future.”
Meanwhile, the Department have announced that the Healthy Happy Minds and Engage programmes are also to be scrapped.
Healthy Happy Minds was introduced as a pilot to test the concept of primary counselling and therapeutic support. The pilot was due to end on 31 March 2022 however, a number of Ministerial Directions allowed for the extension of this provision until 31 March 2023.
Schools were made aware in their allocation letters that no further funding would be available after 31 March 2023.
The Department of Education said that they are "very aware" of the continuing impacts of the pandemic on our children and the positive impact that the Healthy Happy Minds has had on pupils across all educational settings.
They added that they will now take the opportunity, with the conclusion of the pilot, to fully consider the findings of the evaluation and develop proposals for primary counselling and therapy provision in the context of the Children and Young People’s Emotional Health and Wellbeing Framework.
On the Engage programme, which was funded out of additional Covid-19 funding initially and a number of Ministerial Directions subsequently allowed for the extension of the programme until 31 March 2023, the Department said that the level of funding that is required to enable the programme to continue would impair the Department’s ability to control and manage its expenditure within budget.
“In light of the significant budgetary pressures facing the Northern Ireland Block in 2023-24 and in the absence of a budget allocation to the Department of Education by the Secretary of State, no further funding is available for the Healthy Happy Minds pilot and the Engage Programme and these programmes will cease on 31 March 2023," they said.
“We recognise how disappointing these decisions will be for everyone involved in the delivery of these initiatives and for the young people who have benefitted from them. However, given significant budgetary pressures, it has been necessary for the Department to make these difficult decisions.
“We will draw on the positive learning from both programmes, which were fundamental in helping our children and young people address the impacts of the pandemic, to inform the development and implementation of future interventions.
“The Department is extremely grateful to all those who have supported the delivery of Healthy Happy Minds and Engage over the past number of years to provide invaluable support to pupils across all our educational settings.
"We must learn from the excellent practice that has been established as a result of the programme and use this to inform our policy development," they continued.
"Our engagement with schools highlights the continuing impacts of the pandemic on our children and young people and we will seek to find ways to address these impacts through our broader suite of policies and interventions.
"Schools were made aware that no further funding would be available after the 31 March 2023 in their allocation letters and communications in respect of the Engage Planner in November 2022 and February 2023."
Responding to the decision to end the Healthy Happy Minds pilot and the Engage Programme Justin McCamphill NASUWT National Official for Northern Ireland said: "The withdrawal of both of these schemes will have a devastating impact on children and young people. It is now clear that there is to be no post-Covid recovery plan for education in Northern Ireland.
"The Healthy Happy Minds pilot was important to rebuilding the mental health of our youngest children while the Engage programme was making a real difference to supporting disadvantaged young people.
"Like many decisions recently this decision has been made at the last minute. It is simply not acceptable that many teachers will be told today that their jobs will finish tomorrow.
"Many of these teachers will have been employed for more than a year and will have gained protection from unfair dismissal.
"The NASUWT expect that all employing authorities will ensure that no school acts outside the law in dismissing teachers and we encourage schools where the budgets allow to keep these teachers on to the end of the academic year.
"This decision is being made in the context of wider cuts to Education and against a back drop of accelerating real terms pay cuts. The Department of Education should be in no doubt that cutting services will only strengthen the resolve of NASUWT members to step up industrial action after Easter."
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