1 - Local Authority details

LA name

Staffordshire County Council

LA HAF Coordinator

Debra Berry

Overall 2022/23 performance

Finance:

The breakdown of the 2022/23 funding is above.

This shows that we spend 7% of the funding over the programme was spent on administering and promoting HAF.

We ran 3 marketing campaigns throughout the year, consisting of direct letters to every parent who has a child eligible for free school meals, Social Media campaigns, signage adverts on buses, phone boxes and banners outside of schools.

The HAF team is made up of 1 full time Commissioner and a part time campaigns officer.

This year we have increased this to 1 full time commissioning. This year, we have increased this to 1 full time commissioner, 1 fulltime administrative officer, a part time intelligence and analysis officer and a part time campaigns officer.

Guidance for the HAF allows for up to 10% of the total grant to be utilised for administration. Staffordshire County Council have utilised the surplus to provide more HAF places for Children throughout the year.

Over each programme attendance levels have increased from 60% to 65%, and Easter 2023 70% of our HAF places taken up.

Over the course of the last year, 5000 eligible children benefited from attendance of at least one HAF place.

Easter 2022

• 4818 primary aged children attended a HAF place, of those 58 identified as SEND whilst 12 were children from the non-eligible cohort.
• 708 Secondary aged children attended a HAF club, 225 recorded SEND and only 15 non-eligible. Interesting to note a greater percentage of SEND secondary aged children and young people attended.

Summer 2022

• 2439 primary aged children attended a HAF place, of those 400 identified as SEND whilst 30 were children from the non-eligible cohort.
• 680 Secondary aged children attend a HAF club, 8 recorded SEND and 20 were non-eligible.

Less children took part in the HAF programme as a whole but booked and attended more places over the summer period.

Winter 2022:

• 1576 primary aged children attended a HAF place, and of those 180 identified as SEND.
• 217 Secondary aged children attended a HAF club, 180 recorded SEND

How did you market / promote your HAF programme?

The Staffordshire County Council HAF team includes a part-time Campaigns Officer to market and promote the HAF programme before each holiday. Each eligible child received a letter and invite via parents/carers advertising the scheme issuing their individual HAF code required for booking places and the launch date of the HAF portal to sign up to view the timetables and book places. Before each HAF programme, the HAF team work together to set targets for each holiday campaign as in Easter 2022 below: 

Easter campaign - communication targets

• 1,500 individual children to be signed-up via Staffordshire County Council registration who are eligible for benefit-related free school meals
• 2,900 unique visits to the HAF web page
• Positive media coverage
• 3% Facebook Engagement

The results are then analysed post HAF programme to identify improvements:

Easter Campaign performance against targets

• 1,883 (383 above target) individual children signed up via Staffordshire County Council registration who are eligible for benefit-related free school meals 
• 2,146 (750 less than target) unique users to the web page
• Positive media coverage
• 3% Facebook Engagement (see below)

After each programme a review of the Comms strategy is carried out, and following our learning from the Easter and Summer Comms campaigns, the Winter 2022/23 HAF programme saw new marketing initiatives including:

• Social media to include craft ideas for children not able to attend #MakeItMonday
• Selfie style videos requested from providers to talk about their planned activities. These were posted on social media.
• As numbers are lower for the winter programme, we decided to include a Winter Wonderland invitation to help add excitement which also contained a QR code for quick access to the registration link.

2022/23 comms strategy

The HAF comms strategy targets parents/carers of eligible children in priority wards as these have the largest populations of eligible children and young people. Pre every HAF, launch we have a ‘warm up’ campaign with a teaser to let parents/carers know HAF will be available during the holidays and the registration dates to book HAF places.

Warm up campaigns include the use of digital D6 screens, bus advertising, telephone kiosks and billboards for the first time.

Materials are updated for each holiday to keep the materials fresh along with related elements such as for Easter elements included daffodils, butterflies, and green grass. There us a HAF QR code, used on all comms on materials where it works.

Examples of advert placement includes:

• inside buses - two different providers (covering different parts of Staffordshire)
• on 28 x telephone boxes (these work like a street billboard
• D6 digital boards were trialled in areas with less bus coverage for 2 weeks over - adverts appear in a loop with timetables and other adverts and are on-screen for around 10 seconds.
• A3 posters were sent out for display to the top 150 schools with the most eligible children. The top 150 schools also have the outside banners which are re-useable.

Other advertising materials used in comms campaigns include: 

Pull up banners, posters and A5 leaflets and screen savers sent to:

• libraries
• children's centres
• printable PDF posters sent to GP surgeries, food banks, social and health workers, parish associations
• schools outside the top 150

We also use school's internal comms, with articles in Primary Times, Staffordshire County Council schools newsletter.

Provider comms strategy

We identified that for the 2022/23 HAF delivery we needed to increase the variety and geographical spread of providers and develop a digital approach to increases awareness of the HAF grant available to suitable providers.

Comms included details of HAF, what was required and how to apply plus highlighting the HAF Light offer was available to specialist organisations that could provide minimum of 2 hours per day for a minimum of 2 days per week.

At the same time, we used the school (School Bag) electronic newsletter to encourage schools to either consider becoming providers or to let us know if their school could be available to hire by other HAF providers.

In February 2022 Facebook posts were issued advising of HAF grant funding.

Were there any challenges in delivering the programme?

 Staffordshire is a rural County with 8 districts/borough councils within. We also border several other LA’s, at times affecting the locations of delivery, differences in approaches to data collection, and allocation of places.

To ensure an equity of provision that meets need and to endeavour to remove barriers across the County, funding is allocated for HAF provision in relation to the number of Children eligible for free school meals in each Local Council District or Borough. Over 2022, partnership work has been intensified to increase the number of HAF clubs in the rural areas, annual meetings are held with providers sharing data as localised need as well as good practice. Summer 2022 saw the equivalent offer to need for the first time in all the Staffordshire districts. This had been achieved by raising the HAF offer with schools, linking potential providers with schools, and working with our voluntary agencies umbrella organisation, to support local grass roots organisations to achieve the safeguarding, health and safety and insurance requirements to enable them to bid for HAF funding.

During 2023-2024, a key priority for HAF is to increase the number of places for SEND Children across Staffordshire and attendance. We will do this with partnership working with our Aiming High Commissioner, partnering with Schools and providers and SCYVS.

Who made up your steering group?

We are pleased that since the launch of HAF in Staffordshire, the Support for Young People Steering Group has shaped and oversees and scrutinises the HAF programme.

Membership consists of, but is not limited to, multi-agency partners from across Staffordshire County Council, SCVYS, VCSE sector, District Councils and public sector partners (Police, Fire and Crime Commissioner’s Office).

The Support for Young People Steering Group is chaired by Phil Pusey – Chief Executive of Staffordshire Council for Voluntary Youth Services. The Vice-Chair is Declan Kinney – Commissioning Officer for Staffordshire County Council. 

Did you receive any extra funding, support, resources, food, etc. If so, who from?

Though there is no additional direct funding for the programme, Staffordshire County Council, we have developed the HAF offer through partnerships. The Libraries team asked for HAF providers to partner with them for the DfE’s Summer Reading Challenge, and this provided free books to children taking part in HAF clubs.

COOP, Morrisons, Tescos and Sainsburys contributed food including fresh fruit and drinks.

Our aim is to build on these partnerships as an ever more local bases through our Family Hubs, 2023.