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Daily Record
14 hours ago
- Business
- Daily Record
Parents urged to check school meal support ahead of summer holidays
Households with two children could be entitled to between £150 and £288 over the school holidays this summer. How to apply for Tax-Free Childcare and 30 hours childcare Parents across Scotland are being reminded by a charity that they could be eligible for extra payments over the school holidays to cover the cost of meals for their children this summer. National advice agency Advice Direct Scotland is urging households to check if they qualify for support before schools break up for the summer later this month. Households normally eligible for free school meals during term time should automatically start receiving payments of £2.50 or £4.80 per day, per child, during the holidays, depending on the child's age and where they live. While exact holiday dates vary by council, a household with two children could be entitled to between £150 and £288 to help cover meal costs o ver the course of the six-week summer break. Parents who have not yet applied for free school meals, or who might start claiming benefits over the holidays due to a change in circumstances, are being urged to take action now. All children in P1 to P5 at schools run by local councils currently receive free school lunches during term time, regardless of their family circumstances. Children in P6 and above continue to qualify only if they come from low-income households. Over the summer and other holidays, support is available to those who normally receive free school meals. Payments are set at £2.50 per day, per child, for each weekday during the holidays, excluding weekends. However, some councils, such as Midlothian, offer higher rates of £4.20 per primary school pupil and £4.80 per secondary school pupil. This means summer payments will be around £75, £126, or £144 per child, depending on the rate and school stage. Rebecca Fagan, benefit and welfare information officer at Advice Direct Scotland, said: 'With the summer holidays approaching fast, it's crucial that families know about the support available to help provide healthy meals for their children. Many Scots are facing financial difficulties due to the cost-of-living and energy crises and will be worried about holiday-related expenses on top of rising bills. 'For families with children eligible for free school meals, payments are available throughout the summer, so we encourage anyone who might benefit to apply now. Remember, once your application is approved, payments will start promptly and will also be available during other school holidays. 'If you're unsure about your eligibility or need help applying, our team at offers free, confidential support to everyone, regardless of personal circumstances.' How to qualify for free school meals To qualify, people must be in receipt of one of the following benefits: Universal Credit (where monthly earned income is not more than £850) Income Support Income-based Job Seeker's Allowance Income-based Employment and Support Allowance Support under Part VI of the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999 People who are not currently eligible but start receiving one of the above benefits during the summer holidays can apply for the extra support immediately. Applications can be made through councils or online at Those unable to fill out the application can contact the team at for help, over the phone or online. The form takes around 20 minutes to complete. Applicants will need the dates of birth of any children they have, their partner's details if applicable, and their bank details. provides free, practical advice and information on any topic, including access to benefits and whether households are claiming all the support they are entitled to. The team can be contacted on 0808 800 9060, Monday to Friday, 9am–5pm.
Daily Record
3 days ago
- Business
- Daily Record
Lanarkshire parents reminded they could be eligible for extra payments over school holidays
National advice agency Advice Direct Scotland is urging households to check if they qualify for support before schools break up for the summer later this month. Lanarkshire parents are being reminded that they could be eligible for extra payments over the school holidays to cover the cost of meals for their children. National advice agency Advice Direct Scotland is urging households to check if they qualify for support before schools break up for the summer later this month. Households normally eligible for free school meals during term time should automatically start receiving payments of £2.50 or £4.80 per day, per child, during the holidays, depending on the child's age and where they live. While exact holiday dates vary by council, a household with two children could be entitled to between £150 and £288 over the course of the six-week summer break. Those who have not yet applied for free school meals, or who might start claiming benefits over the holidays due to a change in circumstances, are being urged to take action. All children in P1 to P5 at schools run by local councils currently receive free school lunches during term time, regardless of their family circumstances. Children in P6 and above continue to qualify only if they come from low-income households. Over the summer and other holidays, support is available to those who normally receive free school meals. Payments are set at £2.50 per day, per child, for each weekday during the holidays, excluding weekends. This means summer payments will be around £75, £126, or £144 per child, depending on the rate and school stage. To qualify, people must be in receipt of one of the following benefits: Universal Credit (where monthly earned income is not more than £850) Income Support Income-based Job Seeker's Allowance Income-based Employment and Support Allowance Support under Part VI of the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999. Rebecca Fagan, benefit and welfare information officer at Advice Direct Scotland, said: 'With the summer holidays approaching fast, it's crucial that families know about the support available to help provide healthy meals for their children. 'Many Scots are facing financial difficulties due to the cost-of-living and energy crises and will be worried about holiday-related expenses on top of rising bills. 'For families with children eligible for free school meals, payments are available throughout the summer, so we encourage anyone who might benefit to apply now. 'Remember, once your application is approved, payments will start promptly and will also be available during other school holidays. 'If you're unsure about your eligibility or need help applying, our team at offers free, confidential support to everyone, regardless of personal circumstances.' provides free, practical advice and information on any topic, including access to benefits and whether households are claiming all the support they are entitled to. And did you know Lanarkshire Live had its own app? Download yours for free here.
Scotsman
03-06-2025
- Health
- Scotsman
How Not To Die (Too Soon) by Devi Sridhar review: 'a manifesto of sorts'
Sign up to our Arts and Culture newsletter, get the latest news and reviews from our specialist arts writers Sign up Thank you for signing up! Did you know with a Digital Subscription to The Scotsman, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. Learn More Sorry, there seem to be some issues. Please try again later. Submitting... Here's the quick answer to the question posed in the title of this book by Devi Sridhar, Professor and Chair of Global Health at the University of Edinburgh and advisor to the Scottish and UK Governments, as well as the World Health Organisation, UNICEF and UNESCO: be the kind of person who buys hardback books and has £22 of disposable income (≈24% of the weekly Job Seeker's Allowance). That is not supposed to be flippant, as one of the insistent points in Sridhar's work is the connection between poverty and ill-health. Professor Devi Sridhar The subtitle makes clear another two aspects: 'The Lies We've Been Sold and The Policies That Can Save Us'. Whenever there is a health problem, there are quacks, mountebanks and charlatans. It's unsurprising that in Delhi, for example, there are expensive air-purifiers for sale. But hats off to Moritz Krähenmann, selling eight litre cans of Swiss Alpine air for £17.60 – we breathe, Sridhar notes, six litres a minute. The second part is trickier. Although there are aspects of our lives that we can control, and which have tangible health benefits, others are beyond the capability of the individual. Good luck solving carcinogenic car fumes, 100˚F summers or rivers full of excrement and chemical run-off on your own. (For the record, climate change is not one of the emergencies Sridhar covers). Politics and the bogey-man word 'regulation' are, unfortunately, the answers sometimes. The title may have a slight after-tang of self-help, but the book itself is more concerned with state-level intervention. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad The chapters cover what Sridhar calls a 'collective endeavour' to increase life expectancy; although the caveat here is on the quality not the duration of life. The first three chapters, uncontentiously enough, cover taking regular exercise, eating a balanced diet and either not taking up or giving up smoking. Then comes a chapter broadly on mental health. This chapter is more sketchy. It limits itself to anxiety disorders – 'struggling' seems as apt a word as any. There is one flash of really smart writing, when Sridhar having discussed the accusation that 'Sustainable Development Goals' in mental health are 'senseless, dreamy and garbled' writes the criteria were 'mostly vague, largely immeasurable, somewhat attainable, and definitely relevant'. Although one section is headed 'It's hard to get depression taken seriously' it's hard to take seriously when she quotes 'even the darkest night will end and the sun will rise' – it might be Victor Hugo, but it sounds like Hallmark. The next sections are more obviously public: gun control, road traffic accidents, water and air pollution; and an appropriate closure on untimely deaths caused by failures of health systems themselves. I was surprised – given Sridhar is based in Scotland – that neither alcohol nor narcotics were given special treatment, especially since minimum pricing and the recent experiment with safe drug consumption facilities. In the governmental rather than individual, it seems strange to omit warfare: as we see increasingly, it is not just cluster bombs and land mines that significantly reduce life expectancy in conflict zones but the deliberate use of food blockades, targeting of medical facilities and 'kettling' populations. Sometimes the book reads like various articles stitched together (there is a curious point in the nicotine chapter where she cites that the cheapest packet of cigarettes in the UK was £8.82 – in 2017. Would it have been too much trouble to put in that the average is now £16.60? It is at its best when it might have been subtitled 'Things Are More Complicated Than You Think'. For example, a whole book might have been done on Thailand and Sweden: Thailand has the world's worst road deaths, but managed to clamp down with sufficient rigour to have minimal Covid deaths. Sweden has strict 'Vision Zero' road safety but was laissez-faire (or cavalier, take your pick) about liberties during the pandemic, with many more deaths. Sridhar ends with a manifesto of sorts. Change is possible (for the better, I should add), it happens when there is consensus (see the difference between smoking bans and ultra low-emission zone), we can all learn from other countries, even when what we learn is that risks balance out, and the 'private sector is valuable… while it's sometimes the solution, its also sometimes part of the problem', which is gold-star fence sitting. She also has five 'asks' of government: make fresh food cheaper, provide alternatives to cars, privatise water companies, and invest in preventative medicine. I'd like to know quite how this gels with the private sector's role. One other recommendation seems to me plain wrong: 'provide local access to lay therapists, which takes mental health provision out of medical clinics'. Although I very much agree with Suzanne O'Sullivan on over-diagnosis, the benefits of therapy and non-material causes for genuine and painful material harms, the idea of outsourcing something so significant to unregistered amateurs seems ill-considered. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad The plethora of contemporary references – Khloé Kardashian, Andy Murray, Catherine Princess of Wales, Feargal Sharkey – bolsters the sense this is in part a laudable exercise in recycling comment pieces. No doubt it will also strengthen the public engagement section for Edinburgh University in the next round of the Higher Education Research Excellence Framework.
