ABSTRACT
This study traces the evolution of children's feeding programs established in Atlantic Canada from a few months to over 15 years ago. Our qualitative analysis of nine children's feeding programs in Atlantic Canada revealed that they began as an ad hoc, community-based effort to feed hungry children. All subsequently experienced stress related to community mobilization. In order to recover from this stress, programs "routinized," often with fewer volunteers or by adopting measures that ensured efficiency and stability. While one program remained routinized, others gradually assumed more features of institutionalization as a response to externally or internally imposed crises. They did so by adopting professional management strategies and often hiring professional personnel. As the institutionalized programs continued, they became driven by the need to feed themselves, which was often greater than their mission to feed hungry children. The challenge for dietitians assisting children's feeding program operators, policy makers, children's advocates, and citizens is to reflect upon which organizational models of children's feeding programs should be supported.
Subject(s)
Child Health Services/organization & administration , Food Services/organization & administration , Canada , Child , Child Health Services/trends , Child Nutritional Physiological Phenomena , Food Services/trends , Humans , Hunger , PovertyABSTRACT
Ivan Illich's 1976 prediction that medical dragnets will continue was correct. Now quasi-health dragnets are being established ostensibly to feed children perceived to be hungry. Our qualitative, multi-site case study found that programs justify their expansion to non-target group children as a means of reducing stigmatization, while reaching only an estimated one-third of targeted children. The dragnet continues as new services are added and franchising is proposed while the purpose of the program feeding healthy foods to children ultimately succumbs to drives for efficiency and the desire to maintain the program itself. In this field of social power relations, children become commodified through dialectical interplays among fundamental needs, manipulated needs, benevolence, and domination.
Subject(s)
Child Health Services/organization & administration , Child Nutritional Physiological Phenomena , Food Services/organization & administration , Canada , Child , Humans , Hunger , PovertyABSTRACT
This study analyzed, through case studies of day-to-day observations and interviews with recipients and operators, the operations of nine children's feeding programs in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Newfoundland. We found that children's feeding programs result in the stigmatization of participants and families, despite an ideology of equality. Most programs adopt a family substitution role in the lives of children they serve and function in a way that excludes parental participation. Programs also transmit a hidden curriculum to children that teaches them how to behave and how a 'proper' family functions. We found that the professionalization of food and nutrition, a desire for an expanded client base, and dependency creation through the provision of other material goods, permit programs to exert increasing institutional control over recipients, a process we, following Illich, call the dragnet. While these programs may be meeting some nutritional needs in a few poverty-stricken children, they ultimately reproduce, rather than reduce, inequities.
Subject(s)
Child Nutritional Physiological Phenomena , Food Services/organization & administration , Health Services Accessibility/economics , Poverty , Attitude to Health , Child , Child, Preschool , Focus Groups , Humans , New Brunswick , Newfoundland and Labrador , Nova Scotia , Program Evaluation , Stereotyping , Surveys and QuestionnairesABSTRACT
This survey examined the processes by which programs feeding hungry children in Canada are initiated, implemented and sustained. The responses of 32 operators of these programs were obtained by semi-structured telephone interviews and were analysed using qualitative research methods. Concerned citizens within the community and teachers were the major proponents for programs; their primary indicators of need were children's hunger-related behaviours. Programs generally provided the breakfast or lunch meal, were overseen by a board, and were operated by a mix of paid and volunteer staff. A lack of resources, problems with parents and the community, and managerial stresses were the main perceived barriers to program continuance. Programs run by communities generally had more need for resources, expressed lower confidence in their sustainability, and were less likely to cooperate with other groups than school-run programs. While some programs deliberately tried to avoid stigmatization, program operators did hold some prejudicial views about the communities they served and few programs could be considered empowering to users.
