Authors: Lauren Denyer and Andy Feltham
Some children experience sensory processing difficulties, which can make the texture and taste of some foods challenging, and Avoidant Restrictive Food Intake Disorder – an eating disorder characterised by limited food intake and the avoidance of certain foods or food groups. These can make accessing the school food they’re entitled to difficult for some children with SEND.
Funded by the National Institute of Health and Care Research (NIHR), Adapt-Ed has carried out scoping research aimed at improving the uptake and impact of food in special schools and schools with specialist provision.
To raise awareness of the project, in December, the Adapt-Ed team and School Food Matters attended the Houses of Parliament to address the All-Party Parliamentary Group for School Food. The cross-party group, chaired by Sharon Hodgson MP, brings together key experts to discuss school food issues and identify best practices.
During our presentation, we shared our early findings from the project, including data from the East of England that shows special schools have around twice the proportion of children eligible for free school meals (FSM) as other types of schools. We also found more than one in four FSM-eligible children in special schools are not taking up this entitlement.
Further, one in four infant children in special schools are not accessing a universal infant FSM, compared with just one in eight in schools with no SEN or resourced provision. This means that children with SEND may not be eating a school meal, and so either children have to bring a packed lunch to school, or some may not eat at all during the school day. Sharon Hodgson MP was particularly interested in these statistics and felt it was shocking that so many children were missing out on their entitlement.
We also shared some of the insights from our collaborative work with our different ‘stakeholder’ groups - children and young people with SEND, parents and carers, people working in schools and people working in policy. One key theme that emerged was the importance of flexibility in both the food offered and the environment in which it’s eaten. You can see more of our findings from our work with children and young people with SEND and their parents or carers here.
Adapt-Ed Principal Investigator, Rebecca O’Connell, said:
“We were delighted to join Sharon Hodgson MP, Luke Hall and colleagues to share our work-in-progress on Adapt-Ed. Though it is a fairly small scoping project, we have spoken with more than forty children and young people so far, and an even larger number of other stakeholders, including parents, carers, and people working in and with schools.
“We told the APPG that we thought the reason so many people have been so keen to get involved is because it is such an important topic, on which action is urgently needed, to ensure children with SEND can access their entitlement to food at school.”
Adapt-Ed Public Co-Applicant, Andy Feltham, who is co-leading the work with public contributors, including children and young people, said:
"The interest of the school food APPG was a great demonstration that children with SEND in special schools are not being forgotten in the battle for more nutritious food provision. Children with SEND deserve accessible, inclusive access to food at school, and I was so pleased to see the positive response MPs had to our research.”
Hopefully, this will be the beginning of conversations to improve school food for children with SEND and we plan to continue our work throughout this year.
This is the second blog of our new series, highlighting the importance of making school food inclusive, to meet the needs of all children (you can find out more about the project here).
If you work in or with schools and are interested in improving food for children and young people with SEND, or you are a parent or carer of a child with SEND, we would love to hear from you. Please contact the research team via email at adapt-ed@herts.ac.uk
