Impact of Social Policy on Children

This study evaluates the impact of two social policies, Free School Meal Policy 2018 and Early Years Pupil Premium 2019, on children, their families and policy practitioners in UK. The policies have been analyzed on the basis of the Eco System’s theory given by Bronfenbrenner. The impact of these policies has been analyzed on the basis of the Eco System’s theory given by Bronfenbrenner. The document type is an essay and the type of assignment is a research paper.

IMPACT OF SOCIAL POLICY ON CHILDREN
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Child Poverty Policy since 2010
Poverty is one of the curses that millions of people face everyday all over the world. every
person or family that lacks the enough resources to live a healthy and secured life can fall
under the below poverty zone. Children are the ones that suffer the most due to the poverty that
their families struggle with. As a result, they become victims of malnutrition, illness, and
diseases and also become one of the disadvantaged groups in the society who are debarred
from many opportunities from their early childhood periods. Thus, the social policies regarding
child poverty has become one of the important concerns in UK for the policy practitioners and
also for the poor families. So, in this study, two social policies have been evaluated on the
basis of their impact on children, their families and policy practitioners of UK in the recent
time. For that reason, some important aspects and background of the policies have been
investigated. The impact of these policies has been analyzed on the basis of the Eco System’s
theory given by Bronfenbrenner. Two chosen social policies for this evaluation are Free School
Meal Policy 2018 and Early Years Pupil Premium 2019.
The Free School Meal or FSM can be termed as a statutory benefit program in England that has
been launched in 2013 with the aim of giving free meals for all disadvantaged infant school
students from the year 2014. This benefit policy has been launched by the Education
Department of England for the children aging from 1 to 2 years (Department for Education,
2019). This policy has been revised in the year 2018 in order to identify the number of children
who are eligible for this statutory benefit. The scheme has been introduced by the government
so that no child can become victims of hunger due to poverty especially in their initial school
years. The difference between the new updated policies from its older version is that now more
children have been identified and have been taken under to eligibility criteria for this program.
On the other hand, more schools have been enrolled so that this policy can reach as much
infant pupils as possible (gov.uk, 2019). Thus, a new eligibility checking system has been
introduced for the school authorizes so that it becomes easier for them to follow the
identification process. On the other hand, this updated policy has phased out some benefits that
the families used to have under the FSM policy earlier. This has been done because of
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connecting the universal credit criteria with this policy. Previously the policy used to
collaborate with benefits like income related allowance for job seekers, income support, credit
for state pension, child tax credit and so on. Now, only universal credit has replaced all the
different benefits and thus it has been assumed that many children will be left out from getting
proper economical support. According to the Angela Rayner, secretary of Labour, many
children will lose opportunities after the collaboration of universal credit with this policy in
future (Blake, 2019). The reason behind is that the income threshold has been made frozen and
thus it has been predicted that over 1 million children, living under the poverty zone, will have
to suffer from this newly updated policy (Royston, 2019).
Early Years Pupil Premium is another social policy in UK for supporting children from 3 to 4
of age with some additional economical help. This has been introduced in 2015 with the aim of
reducing the gap between the children belonging from an economically balanced family and
the children living with low income families. This is also related to school education where the
little learners get all the facilities so that they can experience equal learning experiences as
their peers get to experience (The Foundation Years, 2019). For that reason, all the required
equipments are being provided to them through the school authorities with the aids given by
this policy. Recently the department of education has come up with a model that has been
helping them to identifying the eligible children for this policy. On the other hand, it has also
been ensured by this new model that the local school authorities get to know which learners of
their schools are to be provided with the benefits of this policy.
So, it can be said that early education period of low income family children have been ensured
through this particular social policy (Early Education, 2019). One of the issues that this policy
has been facing is that still there are a lot of educational institutions that did not apply for this
scheme due to lack of awareness about this policy. According to some reports, many school
authorities do not know that they have to apply for the fund to be released (Robberts, Griggs
and Robb, 2019). Some of the school authorities did not apply because they think that the
process is time consuming and too difficult for them to access (Burns, 2019). So, it can be said
that not much awareness campaigns have been organized from the part of the government to
promote this policy and thus many families have been suffering due to this lack of knowledge.
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The impact of the Free School Meal policy has been huge on the development of children
belonging from poor families. More specifically, a nutritious meal has proven to be beneficial
for the improvement of educational attainment level of the students. According to a survey
around Durham based pilots that have implemented this free meal for children of primary
schools, free school meal has shown a much positive effect on the attainment of education in
those children (Fullfact, 2019). This scenario has been compared with other areas where pilots
were not in operation and it has been found that those areas did not show any improvement in
primary school children. On the other hand, school is one of the institutions that effect the
development of children and thus it is necessary that the school authorities take care of the
nutrition level of their students (Rosa and Tudge, 2013). Now, it needs to be kept in mind that
free school meals are important mainly because it has the capability to reduce the health
inequality that the society has been facing in UK from a very long time. Moreover, this policy
has been helping many economically challenged families so that they can look after their
children more efficiently.
Early Years Pupils Premium has some marvelous effects on the deprived children and their
families in the recent time. This is so because the economical issues have been taken care of at
least to an extent by providing this preschool funding along with some other economical
benefits for the deprived class of the society (Early Education, 2019). This kind of funding is
highly important for the development of children belonging from the deprived class because
children get affected by the socio-economic condition under which they live (Rosa and Tudge,
2013). However, according to some reports, this funding has been used for affording many
educational resources by the schools such as broader curriculum, more teachers, small classes,
early intervention programs and so on (Morton, 2019). This is something terrible because the
funding was supposed to help the deprived children and to support their education and not to
use for own advantages. On the other hand, this project has the potential to challenge the
existing learning level of the children by providing them advanced learning resources so that
their learning can be enhanced.
After the implementation of these policies in UK, many developing countries like India have
started similar initiatives for helping the deprived children and their families. On the other
hand, many social workers have started to collaborate with these ventures to support the poor
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section of the society. For example, institutions like Trades Union Congress, tried hard so that
the government gibes aid to provide free school meals to infant school students in UK and they
have succeeded (The children’s society, 2019). Additionally, other initiatives like breakfast
clubs have been started to help the deprived children. However, several issues have been faced
by the policy providers. For example, many school authorities have been seen to be confused
to decide which grant to give whom. This implies that there are many students are not eligible
for the free school meal but they certainly deserve the EYPP funding and thus the situation
becomes problematic (Early Education, 2019). These points at the measurement or
identification procedure that is responsible for depriving many poor children from the
resources that they deserve. Apart from that, it becomes difficult for the local bodies to identify
each and every deserving candidate for these policies due to lack of transparency in the
identification procedure and thus a vast section of the society suffer.
In conclusion, it can be said that social policies have a huge potential to eradicate the
aftermaths of poverty and to develop the life standards of children in UK. However, it has also
been realized that there are many issues regarding these policies that can be solved to some
extent by simplifying the procedure for the policy providers so that they can easily identify the
needy children. This can be done by introducing a new and simple identification and
measurement model to systematically identify the children and to measure the impact of the
policies on the children and their development in future.
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Reference list
The children’s society (2019), Fair and Square: Free school meals for all children in poverty ,
Available at: https://www.childrenssociety.org.uk/what-you-can-do/campaign-change/fair-and-
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Fullfact (2019), Do free school meals improve how well children do in school? , Available at:
https://fullfact.org/education/do-free-school-meals-improve-how-well-children-do-school/
[Accessed on: 22/3/2019]
gov.uk (2019), Free school meals pilot: impact report, Available at:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/evaluation-of-the-free-school-meals-pilot-
impact-report [Accessed on: 22/3/2019]
Early Education (2019), EYPP references in Ofsted's Common Inspection Framework,
Available at: https://www.early-education.org.uk/eypp-references-ofsteds-common-inspection-
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Robberts, E., Griggs, J. and Robb, S., (2019), Study of Early Education and Development:
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https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/
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on: 22/3/2019]
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Burns, J., (2019), More schools use pupil premium to offset cuts, says charity , Available at:
https://www.bbc.com/news/education-36548525 [Accessed on: 22/3/2019]
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Royston, S., (2019), One million children could go hungry under new plans for free school
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Morton, K., (2019), Lack of awareness stopping providers from applying for EYPP, Available
at: https://www.nurseryworld.co.uk/nursery-world/news/1160440/lack-of-awareness-stopping-
providers-from-applying-for-eypp [Accessed on: 22/3/2019]
Early Education (2019), Measuring impact of the EYPP funding, Available at:
https://www.early-education.org.uk/measuring-impact-eypp-funding [Accessed on: 22/3/2019]
Department for Education (2019) Free School Meals. London: Department for Education.
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attachment_data/file/700139/Free_school_meals_guidance_Apr18.pdf [Accessed on:
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The Foundation Years (2019) Early Years Pupil Premium. London: The Foundation Years.
Available at: https://www.foundationyears.org.uk/2015/02/early-years-pupil-premium-
guidance-for-providers/
Rosa, E.M. and Tudge, J., 2013. Urie Bronfenbrenner's theory of human development: Its
evolution from ecology to bioecology. Journal of Family Theory & Review, 5(4), pp.243-258.
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