By Jackie Brock

WHEN was the last time you were hungry? I don’t mean a quick 10-minutes-before-unch craving. I mean achingly hungry – the kind of hunger that can’t be met.

There are 3.7 million children living in poverty in the UK. That’s more than eight in a classroom of 30 who could be coming into school having had no breakfast and leaving with no guarantee of an evening meal. This is happening in an economy which the IMF ranks sixth largest in the world and which Price Waterhouse Cooper forecasts will become the second largest in Europe by 2020.

As the economy grows, the life chances of more than one-quarter of UK children will shrink. Figures from the Institute for Fiscal Studies predict that up to 100,000 more children will be living in poverty in Scotland in 2020 than in 2012.?The national charity I run, Children in Scotland, recently worked in two communities, Ibrox in Glasgow and Irvine in North Ayrshire, which are at the eye of the storm. Headteachers at local schools in these communities report the challenges families face not in terms of education but basic need. They talk about profoundly stressed and malnourished parents, and children returning to cold homes with no prospect of food.

Free school meal (FSM) entitlement is a recognised indicator of poverty. According to the schools’ headteachers, at Ibrox Primary FSM take-up is 71 per cent – a 50 per cent rise in two years. At Irvine Royal Academy in North Ayrshire almost half of pupils receive clothing grants.

Think of the demands placed on most schools now in terms of attainment, pupil support and family engagement. Now imagine schools having to balance all this but also cope with the daily injustices that poverty brings. That they continue to do so is testament to the courage of their staff, pupils and parents. But they are overburdened and they need our help. ?I believe that, in 2016, food poverty of the kind being experienced in Ibrox and Irvine is completely unacceptable. It weakens wellbeing, damages educational attainment, and squanders potential. Families in Scotland deserve better.?That’s why we have collaborated with Scottish Business in the Community and food suppliers Brakes to take forward a new project we hope will help address food poverty in these communities. Initially focusing on Ibrox and Irvine, our Food, Families, Futures programme will ensure the provision of meals in schools at weekends and during holidays – times when access to free school meals ends and many families are plunged into crisis. Our ambition is to develop a programme that could be replicated across Scotland, but carefully tailored to areas of greatest need.?Our project arrives at a time when attitudes to poverty in the UK are in flux. Mori recently revealed that 18 per cent of those polled regarded poverty as "the most important issue facing Britain today" – its highest rating. But in public discussion, harsh attitude towards what is perceived to be "welfare dependency" dominates. "Strivers" win against "skivers" in a binary debate that has little relationship with evidence.

Launching its Talking About Poverty recently, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation said that those seeking to tackle poverty in the UK need to find a more effective story to shape public understanding of the issue and motivate compassion and action.

I believe we can do this by promoting evidence and exposing the reality of what communities such as Ibrox and Irvine face; by understanding that policy decisions do change lives (between 1999 and 2012 1.1 million children were lifted out of poverty); and by recognising that whether you come at the problem from the heart or the head, tolerating child poverty makes no sense.

Research at Loughborough University estimates that child poverty costs the UK at least £29 billion a year. Intervening later to mitigate against the effects of poverty on adults will always cost more than making sure children are nourished early in their lives. Children who grow up in poverty are less likely to gain the skills to secure jobs. As a consequence the talent pipeline of the country is stifled, and the potential tax yield for the UK Exchequer is drastically lowered.

In the absence of an immediate political solution, charities such as ours, in collaboration with businesses that share our values, need to help children in deprived communities and encourage a better quality of informed dialogue around child poverty.

We want to take action now to ensure our young people have an education that isn’t undermined by food poverty. That means achieving something we all agree on: fewer children beginning and ending their days hungry.

Jackie Brock is Chief Executive of Children in Scotland