Child Food Insecurity

What can we learn from children’s voices?

Food insecurity arises from reduce, restricted or uncertain physical and economic access to sufficient, safe, nutritious and appropriate food. Whilst Australia doesn’t monitor child food insecurity, the United Nations estimates that 16% of Australian children under the age of 15 years lived with an adult who was food insecure in 2017. Food insecurity is important because it can impact children’s physical, social, cognitive and psychological development. There is limited Australian qualitative evidence on the experience of food insecurity from a child’s perspective.

Using the Australian government’s own data, our research found that food insecurity is higher among single parent families and those receiving government financial assistance. We also found that 43% of food insecure households seek help from welfare or community organisations. Read more here.

Learn more about the project

This project is being managed by Christina Pollard and Sue Booth. The pilot phase was conducted in 2018, and involved interviews with n= 11 children aged 10-13 years. These young people were recruited via the charity KickStart for Kids school holiday camps. The interviews aimed to understand child perceptions and experiences of food insecurity and included drawings and emoji scales.

The results indicated:

  • Children are active agents in negotiating food insecurity
  • Children understood food insecurity in relational ways
  • Children described how food availability could operate in waves and subsequent coping strategies
  • Children are actively engaged in protecting their peers and family from hunger
  • Food insecurity impacts on the emotional and social wellbeing of children.

Learning from lived experience

In 2022, following COVID, the project continued and aimed to build on our pilot work and establish a new child-derived understanding of food security to provide a critical basis from which to assess and respond to food insecurity amongst Australian children. 

We seek to understand how children perceive, understand and experience food insecurity in their everyday lives. This will be done by:

  • Determining the prevalence of food insecurity among children aged 10-13 years living in low-income families, using a child-administered survey
  • Generating rich data on children’s lived experiences of food insecurity 
  • Identifying systemic issues that contribute to children’s experiences of food insecurity
  • Examining children’s perceptions of challenges and coping mechanisms adopted by children and their families to navigate food insecurity.

We would like to acknowledge and thank our key advocacy partners