Holiday Activities and Food annual report

The Department of Education provided funding of £822,840 for 2023 in Gateshead to fund Holiday Activities and Food (HAF) over the Easter, Summer and Christmas School Holidays for benefits-related Free School Meal (FSM) recipients and vulnerable children.

Our holiday clubs all include:

• healthy meals 
• enriching activities (provide fun activities with opportunities to develop skills and knowledge)
• physical activities (which meet the physical activity guidelines)
• nutritional education (awareness of healthy eating and how to source, prepare and cook nutritious and low-cost food
• signposting and referrals to other services and support

In total there are 7,971 children who are eligible for school meals, living in 3,407 households across the borough. The programme also aims to help additional families who are struggling to make ends meet but do not access this benefit.

A HAF (Holiday Activities and Food Programme) Steering group meets bi-monthly to plan and co-ordinate the Brighten the Day programme. 

Representatives on the steering group include officers from Public Health, Children's Services, Poverty Team, Localities Team, Leisure Team, Gateshead Youth Council, Libraries Team, Communications Team and the Digital Team. 

We continue to meet with and offer the Gateshead HAF programme to as many schools as we can. During 2023 we have increased the number of schools we engage with particularly with our secondary and academy colleagues.

We have developed strong partnerships with our new Family Hub network. We see this area key to the sustainability and increasing the take up of families in receipt of benefit related FSM in Gateshead. 

 

DfE funding allocation of £822,840 for 2023 in Gateshead to fund Holiday Activities and Food (HAF) over the Easter, Summer and Christmas school holidays for benefits-related Free School Meal (FSM) recipients and vulnerable children.

The holiday clubs in Gateshead were delivered in 63 venues: 13 community organisations, 22 schools (including 4 secondary and 3 special schools), 12 sports venues, 3 Arts and Theatre Groups, 4 Pop Ups, 5 Family Hub's, 2 refugee and asylum groups and 2 church organisations. 

Almost 25,000 places were delivered across the three programmes. 

In 2023 HAF funded over 100 educational/cultural/enriching visits for families including:

• a day at the beach
• a day in the woods
• ice skating
• museum visits
• cinema
• pantomime 
• art galleries
• ten pin bowling
• cooking

The programme was very popular and was well received by children and young people and their parents and carers. 

Gateshead Football Club Foundation summer 2023 (case study)

As around 36% of children in Gateshead live in poverty, Gateshead FC Community Foundation's primary focus is to inspire aspirations in marginalised and disadvantaged children and young people across the low-income communities of Gateshead. They do this through fun and meaningful activities such as football, sports and group games, mental health awareness, arts and crafts, cookery, life skills, and cultural outings.

During the school holidays there are very few free activities around for children and families to partake in to relieve the boredom and to give the parents a break from childcare.

The Foundation's range of summer activities aim to appeal to all children across the board; hence our activities are not limited to just football and sports.

By working with many funders and organisations the Foundation was able to run 30 events over the holidays to cater for children's needs.

For the children into sports there was football, tennis and boxing and for the creative there was storytelling and crafting sessions along with several family trips and breakfast clubs.

As well as running sessions where participants had to book the Foundation ran a number of football pop-ups in local parks which was a huge success introducing the community to the Foundation.

With 315 individual children attending our football camps and pop-ups and all our other activities being fully booked it has been a very successful summer. Our following on social media also increased as parents were keen to find out about future activities.

We continually take feedback from the children and parents at the activities to ensure we are delivering what the community of Gateshead want and feed this into future planning for the next school holiday.

When planning and running holiday activities the key things, the Foundation has learnt are:

• If the activity is limited to a fixed number of bookings do not make all places available via the booking form keep some back. This will allow you to help families where they were only able to book for example 2 spaces when they needed 3.
• Think out the box when it comes to facilities. The Foundation would normally run 9 camps at the stadium over the summer holidays, we decided this summer to only run 6 at the stadium and with the money saved from facility hire we were able to run 6 pop-up sessions in local parks where facility hire was free.
• If you are running the same activity throughout the holiday period, continually get feedback and change the activity next time based on that feedback.
• Look for collaborations to expand your skill set. The Foundation teamed up with Go the Distance to provide boxing sessions to a group of children.

 

Finance

Total spend - £765,169. This was broken down as follows:

• administration - £82,284 administration costs include funding for HAF lead officer and HAF senior support assistant
• capital expenditure - £2,202
• other expenditure - £46,158
• programme expenditure - £634,525
   

Total places filled in Gateshead

Primary school children

Easter	2,844
Summer	13,707
Christmas	2,814
Total	19,365

Secondary school children

Easter	824
Summer	3,146
Christmas	881
Total	4,851

Unique child places in Gateshead

Easter	2,844
Summer	3,978
Christmas	1,695
Total	8,517

 

Included in these figures are:

• 929 children with SEND
• 204 children whose parents are refugee and asylum seekers
• 180 Jewish children - non DFE

The average cost per child per day was £27.

Our providers

In 2023 a total of 68 organisations supported the HAF programme in Gateshead. These included:

• 16 primary schools
• 12 youth and community centres
• 12 sports and activity groups
• 3 arts and theatre
• 4 pop ups
• 5 Family Hubs
• 4 church groups
• 4 secondary schools
• 3 SEND schools
• 3 Jewish young people's support groups
• 2 refugee and asylum support organisations

Boxing 1

Football pop up

Rutherford group

Boxing 1

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Gateshead Council identified an absence of teenage involvement with the mainstream HAF programme in early 2022. Examining this absence of engagement from this important age group was seen as a major driver for the Gateshead HAF programme. Talking to HAF Leads across England in early 2022 it became clear that this was not just a Gateshead problem it was a national problem within most of the HAF programmes in England.

Having worked closely with Professor Greta Defeyter, Professor of Developmental Psychology at Northumbria University previously on several other successful mainstream HAF projects, we turned to Professor Defeyter and her remarkable academic team. We were confident that their innovative approach would support Gateshead Council in the development, design and delivery of a new HAF Plus programme for Gateshead.

Greta and her team developed a design sprint model that involved working closely with teenagers from Gateshead and key adult stakeholders they began to co-design a very distinctive HAF Plus programme for teenagers. Supported by Gateshead Council, NUFC Foundation and the Gateshead Youth Assembly the team began working on planning this inspirational work. During the autumn and winter of 2022, the young people supported by these key anchor institutions co-designed a HAF Plus model for Gateshead. The young people involved were invited to present this new innovative HAF Plus model to the Department for Education in October 2022. 

Following this exciting event Greta and her team got these key anchor institutions from across Gateshead/Newcastle together again to work with the young people to deliver a Pilot HAF Plus programme in Gateshead during the summer of 2023.

With guidance and support from Greta's academic team, NUcastle Foundation and Gateshead Council the young people involved managed their own independent programme of activities, making their own decisions on what activities to engage or attend. The programme was based in the Metrocentre's Community HUB.

Activities included:

• cinema
• ice skating
• ten pin bowling
• Beamish Museum
• sports at Northumbria University and NUcastle Foundation
• stem activities
• National Trust volunteering
• Hays and Kilner Solicitors work experience
• kayaking and climbing
• the BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art
• a 4 week all zones travel pass

The programme was a great success so much so that the Gateshead HAF Plus team hosted and delivered a HAF Plus conference at the BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art in February 2024.

An important element of the HAF Plus is the food element of the programme. The food was provided by Greggs who worked very closely with a nutritionist from Northumbria University to develop healthy lunch options for the Gateshead HAF Plus programme.

To promote our HAF programme we have a dedicated Brighten the Day webpage. The website features a promotional video for Brighten the Day, activities for families to get involved in outside of the HAF programme and details of the latest programme with how to book. 

This booking page is on a hidden part of the website and a link is given to families in receipt of free school meals so they can access activities in advance. Only when most of the spaces are booked is the page made public so any family can book.

Four weeks before each holiday period we send out an email to all the families we have details for who we know have a free school meals qualified child in their family.  This email contains a link to the hidden part of the website.  This is then supplemented by a text message to the same families in the following week to encourage more bookings. 

Other marketing activity included:

• articles on the council's news story web pages
• press release on funding and activities released to local media
• stories in Council News, our resident's magazine which is distributed to over 95,000 households across Gateshead
• articles in Gateshead Now, our digital e-newsletter which has over 34,000 subscribers
• articles in our internal employee bulletin, distributed to over 4,000 staff
• social media via our corporate Facebook and X social media pages, (29,000 and 22,100 followers respectively)
• branded HAF pop up stands which are used at activities and events 

In 2023 we found, through our monitoring visits, that only a very small proportion of clubs were now not providing a hot meal and we expect in 2024 this to be further reduced to zero. 

Food waste remains an issue with providers reporting food waste when only one choice is offered.  We have mentored those organisations and recommended they seek to use caterers who can provide a choice or to use tools such as 'Bushtucker Trials' to increase confidence in the children to try new foods. (See nutritional education and promotion of healthy living / lifestyles). 

The elimination of non-school-food-standards drinks has been a particular focus in 2023.  Our regular infographic series for our providers included this 'Flex your Water' advice which has seen Creative Water Stations popping up at clubs across Gateshead. 

Chicken or vegetable fajitas remain the most popular meal across the clubs in Gateshead perhaps because they are so colourful as well as tasty, with pasta bolognese of course coming a close second.  

Additional funding and support

The HAF Plus programme (aimed at teenagers) was supported by Greggs Foundation during the pilot programme. In July and August 2023 they provided £2,500 worth of food vouchers that helped to feed the young people involved. 

Morrisons supermarket continue to be very supportive of the programme providing fresh fruit to all our local sports pop ups. Many of our providers have been supported by their local shops and stores such as Tesco, Asda, Greggs and smaller convenience stores. 

Breakfast club food

Breakfast club

Breakfast club food

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Our Pop Up Kitchens continue to be well used and have clocked up some miles as they travel between Gateshead HAF clubs.  Their use falls into two main categories:

• children cooking their own meal for that day, generally their own lunch
• children cooking a meal to take home to enjoy with their families

We have found that when the children cook the lunch they are more likely to eat that meal, even if they didn't personally cook it that day. 

As the kits are not used by HAF in term time, we have loaned them out to youth clubs and Adult learning programmes to further increase nutritional education for the good of the community.  

Our Christmas remote delivery in 2023 included the delivery of 600 Feeding Families Hampers.  To include the physical activity requirement each hamper included the card game 'Snap Fit'.  We also developed a recipe which used, pasta, carrots and cheese (all hamper ingredients) which was packed into the hamper for families to cook together in the Christmas break along with the required cupcake cases.

Chartwells continue to provide some cooking lessons for children attending clubs on their sites in Gateshead as part of their Corporate Social Responsibility Programme. 

Bushtucker Trials have been a really popular way of encouraging children to try new textures and flavours.  We've seen children trying red pepper and peas for the first time and then gone on to really love them.  A local chef often brings a smoothie bike to some clubs which means we can discuss food waste at the same time as delivering messages on nutrition. 

Finally the resources on the GULP website have proven popular in the post lunch period at clubs to interactively illustrate the sugar content of many popular drinks.  

Cooking advice

16 pop up cooking kits were purchased to allow providers the opportunity to provide pop up cooking classes at their venue.

A member of the Gateshead HAF team demonstrated the use of the portable cooking kits.

HAF Providers' Forum

Eighteen providers from across Gateshead attended our first Gateshead HAF Providers forum on Wednesday 10 May 2023. The focus of the event was to ensure that the HAF programme was serving the needs of Gateshead's children and their families.

We discussed: "What to do" and "Who to involve" to improve their HAF offer.

 

Enriching activity

As well as delivering their primary programme, all of our providers in Gateshead offer young people one or more enriching activities. This could be any one or more of the following:

• arts and crafts
• arts and culture
• baking 
• book club
• circus skills
• computers
• cooking
• dancing
• educational trips
• environmental trips
• gardening
• lego
• let's get musical
• local history
• math games
• photography
• puzzles
• scrapbooking
• storytime
• theatre
• various sports
• volunteering

Signposting and referrals

We provided participants and their families with information, signposting or referrals to other services and support which included Citizens Advice Gateshead (CAG), Children's Services, DWP, Benefits, Police, AA, free furniture and white goods, housing in Gateshead.

Gateshead Council's Community Physical Activity Team is strongly represented on the HAF steering group and through delivery of their branch of the project they are able to liaise with and utilise the expertise of several local community sport organisations.

Additionally, they have a number of sports clubs who apply directly for funding. This allows the HAF programme to include high-quality, engaging sports activity with experienced, national governing body qualified coaches. Some activities also take place at venues that may otherwise feel inaccessible to the target group, such as Gateshead International Stadium, and it is rewarding to see local children so excited to be participating in the same arena that has hosted international stars. Additionally, the programme has offered multi-sports camps, some that have the option of daily swimming to further enrich the activities available.

The Gateshead HAF programme feels that such a breadth of activities offers inclusivity through choice but recognises that some children will not engage with a more formal physical activity setting and delivery format.

This is why the Community Physical Activity Team also partners with the Hat-Trick project who deliver activities on MUGAs (Multi Use Games Areas) and fields within the housing estates of priority areas and so removes barriers around transport and accessibility.

Their "turn-up and join in" model coupled with music and a range of activities to choose from proves a highly effective way of engaging young people. We engage with a range of low to medium level SEND children with ADHD, behavioural problems and autism.

Although not directly linked to physical activity, it is worth noting that the sports activities are an excellent opportunity for young coaches to gain experience, contributing towards developing their life skills and increasing their employability.

Feedback from the children and families has been positive. It has highlighted the impact of the programme on both physical and mental health.

Here are just a few of the comments we've received.

Feedback from parents

Parents and carers reported that the benefits to their young people had been hugely positive. All thought that attendance had made their young person: happy, more confident, more independent, build friendships, and better prepared to return to school in the following term.

For their household, all said that to some degree the programme had saved them money, and all but one felt that the pilot had eased pressure on their family over the summer.

They all felt that the information that they had received prior to the pilot was useful. Given the opportunity, all would like for their young person to attend future delivery of the programme and they would recommend to other parents and carers of eligible young people.

The free text responses provided an opportunity for some to be gushing in their praise for the pilot, using terms such as 'amazing', 'incredibly helpful' and 'lifesaver'.

Regarding safeguarding, all parents/carers stated that they felt that their young person(s) were safe while attending activities.

Feedback from children

"The best part was travelling around and having something to look forward to each day."

"If I was not in the HAF Plus programme "I would just be sitting at home most of the time."

"Had fun, built new friendships, kept active, used my imagination, became more confident and becoming more independent."

Feedback from providers

"Using the links we've built with partner organisations we've been able to provide new single beds for a group of vulnerable families in Gateshead. One of the children said: I have never had my own bed before this is amazing."

"Children tell us how much they love the Brighten the Day events during school holidays." 

Gateshead play-schemes running during school holidays have benefited from the HAF funding specifically for our SEND young people. 

The play-schemes were able to purchase sensory equipment which helped young people on our schemes engage in activities and to regulate when needed.

The fidget bags and fidget poppers were mobile, so they were able to be used when transporting young people to and from home, during outings and within the quiet and sensory rooms. The wobble and vibrating cushions allow for improving balance, core stability and muscle strengthening as well as providing a calming effect. The lycra has offered us the opportunity to provide young people with deep pressure, a firm tactile sensory input that provides proprioceptive input to the whole body, to help calm and regulate throughout the day.

The smaller, resistant, and pressure-rich toys help reduce stress and anxiety and can be easily controlled by the individual or supporting adult.

This has all helped create a suitable, calming and stimulating environment for SEND children who have HAF programmes at play-schemes and Family Hubs.

Feedback from our families of SEND children:

"Finding a supportive environment that I feel confident can stimulate, educate and entertain is difficult - somewhere where A is safe and also needs around his own behaviour to others can be managed positively. The HAF play-schemes have always delivered this for A."

"I thought the HAF kids programme was great. B told me the list of activities he enjoyed and each day he brought home his work, even made a police officer costume with felt! A firm favourite in the toy box still today. Most importantly this gave me vital time to get out to the shops to re stock the fridge, cupboards and get my essentials to run the home. Taking both boys to the supermarket is a no go for us which is why I would struggle without HAF. Not to mention the 'burnout' every SEN parent goes through. HAF is much needed respite as the only break at all in the holidays, a much needed service."

"N on a personal basis benefits hugely from the programme. It adds a bit of structure to his week when he struggles massively with not having the consistency of school available to him. Facets helps regulate him and his behaviour at home that evening and the following day vastly improves. It gives him his "fix" and happily goes about his evening choosing less demanding activities to engage in. Most importantly to us as parents is that N is really happy when he attends Facets which in turn makes us very happy."

Our target for Summer 2024 is to offer 17,500 holiday club daily places in 60 plus clubs across Gateshead for the equivalent of 4 hours a day, 4 days a week for 4 weeks.

Our key priority area for development in 2024 will be working with all of Gateshead's secondary schools to identify 300+ qualifying teenagers to engage with Gateshead HAF Plus programme during the summer of 2024.  The programme will be controlled by Gateshead's new HAF plus app, this will allow young people to choose what events they would like to attend during the summer of 2024 (29 July to 23 August). The programme will be based in the Metrocentre Community HUB.

Every young person involved in the programme will be issued with a 4 week all zone Tyne and Wear travel pass which is key to HAF Plus's Independent Travel Model.

Healthy lunches and refreshments will be provided by Grounded Kitchen, Greggs Foundation and Subway all located within the Metro Centre.

All the activities available during the 4 week programme have been identified by young people as something they would attend. Activities for 2024 include:

• stottie making with Big River Bakery
• HAF Plus Uni Day including cooking classes
• sport and meet an Olympian
• employability with Newcastle United
• risograph printing
• street art walk
• art workshops with BALTIC (cuch as t-shirt printing, make a poster)
• gaming design with Protégé
• hair and beauty with Gateshead College
• digital with Gateshead College
• dJing with Gateshead College
• crime scene and safety at Safety Works 
• young leaders programme with Gateshead Youth Council
• entrepreneurship with Gateshead College
• live action role play at Gateshead College
• STEM with Newcastle United
• library laser tag
• democracy and you
• cinema tickets
• crazy golf tickets
• 10 pin bowling tickets
• tennis coaching
• street violence with St Johns Ambulance
• Newcastle United Foundation Football
• Newcastle United Foundation multi-sport
• NUCastle Friday fun evenings
• social forestry at Gibside National Trust
• swim at 3 Go Gateshead venues,
• entrepreneurship with National Citizen Service 
• visiting a pop-up hospital