Holiday Activities and Food 2023-24 annual report
The annual report provides you with the opportunity to give an overview of the HAF 2023-24 programme in your LA.
Your report should include:
- the overall funding you have spent on the HAF programme
- the proportion of the funding that was spent on administration and a breakdown of how this was spent
- how many unique children you have reached in each holiday period
- the proportion of primary age and secondary age children who have participated in your programme
- the number of children with SEND or additional needs who have participated in your programme
- information on the families and carers they have engaged with through the food education, signposting and referrals aspect of their programme
- which organisations are represented on their steering group
- which organisations you have worked with in delivering the programme
You may also include:
- feedback from participants, their families or carers
- results of any surveys
- case studies or particular highlights
- how you have promoted the programme and celebrated it through the media and social media
The report for the 2023-2024 HAF programme should be submitted to DfE by 28 June 2024.
While LAs have flexibility in how they format and present their annual report, we have provided this document as a guide to help you structure your report. This is an optional template to use, you are welcome to produce your own report as you deem appropriate. Please complete and submit to haf.policy@education.gov.uk by 28 June 2024. When submitting your report please include a link to the relevant webpage you post it to.
Section 1 - LA details
Which local authority is this report about?
Staffordshire County Council.
Section 2 - Highlights
In this section, you might cover: how much funding you received and how it was spent and how many children you’ve worked with across the year. You might also include how many sessions you’ve delivered and which organisations you’ve worked with and provide details about who forms your HAF steering group and what the key strategies and themes have been for 2023-2024.
Funding
Staffordshire County Council received £2,356,724.00 to deliver the Holiday Activities and food Programme from 1st April 2023 to 31st March 2024. Programmes were delivered Easter 23, Summer 23 and Winter 23/24. Funding was allocated across the following key areas:
Grants to HAF providers: £2,120,823.42
Marketing and promotion: £6,869.91
HAF team and administration: £229,030.67
Staffordshire commissioned a wide range of providers from the private, voluntary, community and social enterprise sector (VCSE) to deliver a varied menu of activities in communities which were local to children in receipt of benefit related free school meals. The HAF programme and its delivery method mirrored the delivery of the Staffordshire Young People’s Offer and our fulfilment of the statutory duty to deliver meaningful leisure-time activities for children and young people.
Delivery and engagement
From April 2023 to March 2024 Staffordshire commissioned the delivery of the following places across Easter, Summer and Winter 2023:
Easter 2023
Primary: 8,343
Secondary: 2,086
Total: 10,429
Summer 2023
Primary: 48,611
Secondary: 1,724
Total: 50,335
Winter 2023-24
Primary: 9,647
Secondary: 2,412
Total: 12,059
Totals
Primary: 66,601
Secondary: 6,222
Overall total: 72,823
Of the 72,823 places funded over the year the following number of places were utilised overall:
Easter 2023
Primary: 5,988
Secondary: 1,497
Total: 7,485
Summer 2023
Primary: 36,705
Secondary: 749
Total: 37,454
Winter 2023-24
Primary: 6,241
Secondary: 1888
Total: 8,129
Totals
Primary: 48,934
Secondary: 4,134
Overall total: 53,068
Of the 53,086 places utilised, HAF engaged with and provided enriching activities and food for the following individual children on each programme, and it is recognised that some children will have attended Easter, Summer and Winter.
Easter 2023
Primary: 1,890
Secondary: 234
Total: 2,124
Summer 2023
Primary: 3,043
Secondary: 472
Total: 3,515
Winter 2023-24
Primary: 1,730
Secondary: 409
Total: 2,139
The strategic planning took a two-tiered approach facilitated by our leadership team and the multi-agency Support for Young People Steering Group.
This ensured representation in our scrutiny and decision-making processes across both strategic and operational partners across the Local Authority, Health, Education, Social Care and the Voluntary, Community and Social Enterprise (VCSE) sector.
The steering group made recommendations to improve the programme for the next financial year and these included:
- Increase the engagement of unique individual children
- Support to providers to ensure the number of children not attending is reduced
- Develop a robust quality assurance process
When measuring progress against these actions, we can communicate the following improvements:
- Development and implementation of a non-attendance policy. This requires providers to report failed attendance for two or more sessions and enables places to be allocated to children on waiting list, where they apply.
- Development and implementation of a quality assurance process, undertaken by a multi-disciplinary team of Commissioning Officers and Family Hub Staff.
Providers
Over Easter, Summer and Winter 2023/24 Staffordshire HAF was delivered by a total of 48 Providers. Our providers were:
- Achieving Goalz and Dreams
- Active Future
- Active Lichfield / LWM services
- ASM Sports
- Aspire Active Education Group Ltd
- Aspire Sports
- Bee Active Ltd
- Burton Albion Community Trust (BACT)
- Caudwell Children
- Community Together CIC
- Crystal Academy
- Dizzy Heights
- Dollymixtures / Allsorts
- Educating Kids Outdoors
- Enjoying Creativity Outdoors
- Everyone Active
- Farlea Childcare
- Freedom Leisure
- Fulfen Primary School
- Gartmore Riding School
- Genius Tuition
- Greenwood Growth CIC
- Just Family CIC
- Koala Klubs
- Liberty Jamboree
- Lichfield Cathedral
- Lichfield Garrick Theatre
- Little Sprouts Forest School
- Pier 52
- Pilot Activity Camps / Pilot IMS
- Premier Education
- Progressive Sports
- School of Coding AI
- Sport4Kids
- Sporting Communities
- Sports Coaching Group
- Sportscool
- Sportsworks
- Stafford Sports and Performance Academy
- Staffordshire Clubs for Young People
- Stoke City Community Trust
- The Creation Station
- The Little Sports Group
- Time 4 Sport
- UTX Tamworth
- Velocity Training Academy
- VIP Education
- Vysions Youth Services
Section 3 - Children and families' feedback
Please provide links to social media activity/videos as well as testimonials or feedback that you have received about your 2023-24 HAF Programme.
As part of our promotion of HAF, we developed a communications plan which included promotion of the Programme based on the experiences of children that have accessed the provision, as outlined below.
View a video about Gartmore Riding School on Facebook.
Ensuring 360 degree feedback from parents/carers, children, young people, providers and quality assurance officers is vital to the evolution of the planning and delivery of the Programme in Staffordshire. It also contributes to and ensures that our wider youth provision also remains a high standard, shaped by its users. In support of this, we captured the voice of children, families, and providers with examples of their comments below:
‘My son doesn’t always do well in different environments as he is autistic, but they have made his time with the club fun for him, he has enjoyed coming to the club each day.’ Parent - Summer 2023.
‘Pier 52 is amazing, the staff are incredible, and my son absolutely loved it and came as many times as he could, food options are also great!’ Parent - Summer 2023.
‘HAF at Liberty in Burntwood were amazing! 10 days of activities and food for my SEN son was an absolute godsend and very much appreciated.’ Parent - Summer 2023.
‘Parents spoke very highly of the HAF in Uttoxeter and used it a lot.’ Provider – Summer 2023.
‘I think this is fantastic for our vulnerable children.’ Provider – Summer 2023.
‘Jayden has loved coming every day thank you so much for everything you all do, really appreciate you all going above and beyond to give them all a safe place to be themselves.’ Parent – Winter 2024.
‘I can swim now! Do you remember when I first started and I couldn't, I was scared.’ Child – Winter 2024.
‘I’ve enjoyed the go karting and all the prizes and sports equipment that I get to play with and football.’ Child – Winter 2024.
‘I’ve enjoyed Ninja Warrior, paintballing and all the prizes and taking us out.’ Child – Winter 2024.
Section 4 - Food
In this section you might cover: Did you provide children and young people with at least one nutritious meal a day? Did you work in any partnerships to provide food? What were the children and young people’s attitudes to the food you provided?
All HAF and HAF Light provision in Staffordshire included a nutritious meal for those in attendance. Providers utilised a range of approaches to delivering food including utilising catering companies, preparing food within the setting and accessing café settings. Our quality assurance visits found a wide range of meal options and, more importantly, choice for children to select and try new ingredients. Quality assurance visits found strong standards of food safety in accordance with school food standards.
Some providers were able to share menus with families in advance of the sessions to support better planning and less food waste. In many instances there were examples of surplus food being distributed to families to take home following the sessions.
Within our provision, we saw innovative examples of providers partnering with local businesses to enhance the offer and draw on the wealth of Social Value initiatives available to voluntary, community and social enterprise (VCSE) groups. Such partnerships included Tesco, Iceland and Co-op Food who provided complimentary fruit and other food items. Morrisons also offered participants two meals in addition to the meal served by the provider in some instances to add value for children & families.
Section 5 - Enriching activities
In this section, you might cover: What enrichment activities did you provide? And why did you focus on those? How did your programme provide opportunities for children and young people to develop and consolidate their skills and knowledge and try out new experiences? Was the impact?
Providers delivered a range of enrichment activities across the programme, including:
- Theme days: Harry Potter - making potions, designing wands / Nerf / Easter - Easter crafts
- Den making
- Baking
- Clay modelling
- Painting
- Forest school activity focus
- DJ workshops
- Making bird feed
- Mindfulness sessions
- Coding and virtual reality kit-use
- Horse grooming
Our Quality Assurance visits explored the decision-making process of providers when planning their activities and the educational value of delivering these enrichment activities. Providers stated their activities enabled children and young people to:
- Develop key skills and critical thinking
- Build self-esteem and confidence
- Team building and problem solving skills
- Developing fine and gross motor skills
- Co-ordination skills
- Listening and communication skills
- Develop interests, hobbies and skills to nurture and develop future training and employment choices and prospects
Children left the Programme having experienced new activities and skills that they can take forward as they develop within their school, youth provision and home environments. These enrichment activities, particularly less accessible activity such as a horse riding and coding, provided children with unique opportunities.
Section 6 - Physical activities
In this section, you might cover: What range of physical activities did you incorporate into your programme? And why did you focus on these? How did you ensure the physical activities you delivered were engaging and inclusive? Did you have any particular successes or highlights?
Providers delivered a range of physical activities across the Programme with the primary focus of encouraging movement skills, muscular fitness and bone strength. Our Quality Assurance visits found widespread positive examples of this, including:
- Athletics
- Foot golf
- Tennis
- Climbing wall
- Boxing
- Football
- Badminton
- Bike riding
- Swimming
- Horse riding
To ensure inclusivity, sessions were often delivered based on age group. In some instances, children were given leadership roles in delivering the activities to support their confidence and self-esteem. Where children did not wish to participate in the sessions, providers were observed adapting the activity or alternative activities were created to ensure that all children were included to ensure inclusivity
The activities demonstrated an ability to add value, particularly where sessions were guided. For example, children were taught to ride bicycles and swim in some instances. The latter reference to swimming lessons contributes to the National Curriculum for the Key Stage 2 cohort.
Section 7 - Nutritional education and the promotion of healthy living/lifestyles
In this section, you might cover: Did your programme deliver activities to educate participants about nutrition? Did you involve parents, carers and other family members in training and advice sessions on nutrition and eating a balanced diet? If yes how? Do the children and families you worked with now have a better understanding of nutrition and food budgeting? Did their attitudes change over the period of the programme?
The Programme delivered a range of activities which promoted nutritional education and healthy living. Our quality assurance visits to providers found positive examples which included children and young people:
- Preparing their own snack sessions; children preparing their own fruit smoothies, fruit kebabs, cereal bars and Greek salads to build knowledge of ingredients and food preparation skills.
- Creation of an eating diary; promoting children logging and analysing their dietary habits for inside and outside of HAF provision to create more awareness around healthy choices, where possible.
- Growing their own fruit & veg; growing strawberries, trips to allotments and community gardens which supported a greater understanding of the journey from ‘field to fork.’
- Providers encouraging children and young people to ask questions about the food they were eating, while staff discussed the impact of food choices on physical and mental health.
All examples included options where parents/carers could be in attendance and it was commonplace for children to return home with ingredients/spare food from the session to try recipes at home, while also reducing food waste. In some instances, providers would create recipe cards for children & families to take away after the session and cook together at home.
Continuing the theme of partnership with businesses, as outlined in Section 4, the Co-op attended some of our Easter HAF provision to deliver healthy choice workshops with the objective of encouraging children to develop basic cookery and food preparation skills.
In one instance, children were tasked with demonstrating how they would apply their newly acquired food education by visiting a mock-up ‘shop’ scene (based on donations from businesses) in which the children had to select their own items and prepare a meal.
Section 8 - Special educational needs and disabilities (SEND)
In this section, you might cover: What provision did you offer for children with Special Educational Needs & Disabilities? Did you offer bespoke provision for these children and young people? How did you ensure that all of the providers you worked with met the needs of children and families? Do you have strong examples that you could share?
127,261 children and young people in Staffordshire are in education. Of those children and young people 7,095 children, or 5.5% of the population, have an Education, Health and Care Plan (EHCP)(Staffordshire Early Help Strategy). Within our HAF provision, some parents/carers described their children as having Special Educational Needs & Disabilities when they were booked on the programme however, we did not capture the number of those who had an EHCP separately. The following number of children with SEND, either with or without an EHCP attended the programme:
Easter 2023
Provision accessed by individual children (Primary) - 1,890
Provision accessed by individual children (Secondary) - 234
Provision accessed by individual children (total) - 2,124
Provision accessed by individual children with SEND (Primary) - 184
Provision accessed by individual children with SEND (Secondary) - 6
Provision accessed by individual children with SEND (Total) - 190
Percentage of overall attendees (Primary) - 9.7%
Percentage of overall attendees (Secondary) - 2.5%
Percentage of overall attendees (Total) - 9%
Summer 2023
Provision accessed by individual children (Primary) - 3,043
Provision accessed by individual children (Secondary) - 472
Provision accessed by individual children (total) - 3,515
Provision accessed by individual children with SEND (Primary) - 481
Provision accessed by individual children with SEND (Secondary) - 130
Provision accessed by individual children with SEND (Total) - 611
Percentage of overall attendees (Primary) - 15.8%
Percentage of overall attendees (Secondary) - 27.5%
Percentage of overall attendees (Total) - 17%
Winter 2023-2024
Provision accessed by individual children (Primary) - 1,730
Provision accessed by individual children (Secondary) - 409
Provision accessed by individual children (total) - 2,139
Provision accessed by individual children with SEND (Primary) - 330
Provision accessed by individual children with SEND (Secondary) - 114
Provision accessed by individual children with SEND (Total) - 444
Percentage of overall attendees (Primary) - 19%
Percentage of overall attendees (Secondary) - 28%
Percentage of overall attendees (Total) - 21%
As outlined, Staffordshire consistently achieved SEND-inclusive attendance above the rate of children in receipt of EHCP’s in Staffordshire.
The delivery model focused on a hybrid of specialist SEND or SEND-inclusive universal provision. Our Quality Assurance visits found strong evidence of universal providers engaging with parents/carers prior to sessions to plan adequate support, where required to meet the needs of individual children and ensure that provision was inclusive. Where a higher level of need was required, for example one to one support, there were examples where specialist provision could be offered.
Examples of our specialist SEND provision included Gartmore Riding School (as featured in our video communication listed in Section 3) while our SEND inclusive universal provision example included Achieving Goalz and Dreams. To demonstrate the impact of this provision and provide a more holistic overview, correspondence from a parent has been shared below as an example of the positive impact that attending a group can have on a child with a special educational need or disability, and how HAF provision contributes towards parental wellbeing. A key factor in the success is that children have expressed an interest in attending provision again, thus demonstrating that the sessions are building confidence and independence.
‘My daughter is nine years old. She's autistic, partly verbal and has mild moderate hearing loss. She wears hearing aids to hear the frequency sounds she misses out. She attended a HAF activity club Achieving Goalz and Dreams the second week of Easter holidays. I was really nervous as this was the first time for her at the club. I'd spoken to the provider beforehand who reassured me that she would be welcomed to the club as it wasn't just for SEND children.
The first day I stayed with her for the first hour and half to see how she would cope. She loved being able to be free and join in the certain activities although she doesn't fully understand rules, etc, this wasn't a problem.
I waited outside to see how she would cope with me leaving her, she was happy to wave me off which gave me confidence to leave her with the provider. She attended the sessions Tuesday to Friday and would wake up in the mornings excited, grabbing her lunch box and pointing to say, Yes! that filled my heart knowing she was happy to go as I never leave her.
On her third day of me picking her up what I loved is some of the children saying bye to her in which she would wave and say bye back just acknowledging her even though I know she's very solitary and plays alone most of the time. Crazy how a simple bye means nothing to some people but really melted me to the point I had tears in my eyes.
On Friday the last day of picking her up she had won a prize of a football which of course is her favourite at the moment. I knew the provider had got to know what she likes/dislikes. The provider was brilliant, I couldn't fault him and his team and I want to say a big thank you for not giving up on her and persisting. I know she can be difficult to care for but I felt no one discriminated against her for being different. We will definitely be returning to the club in the 5 weeks holiday. Thanks again. K.’
Section 9 - Key challenges
In this section, you should provide the details about what the key challenges have been for your programme in 2023-2024.
Our Key challenges for Easter, Summer and Winter 2023/24 were:
- Tha take-up of HAF places by as many unique children as possible
- Development of an efficient booking system to ensure eligibility and prevent duplicate bookings
- How we champion the voice of children and young people in our planning of HAF
- How do we engage more older children
Staffordshire County Council has recently committed to the local Co-production Promise which is available to view on the Staffordshire Council of Voluntary Youth Services (SCVYS) website. We have gathered post-delivery feedback to date , however in the future we intend to champion the voice of children and families regularly and consistently within the planning of the programme to ensure the activities are diverse, delivered in the right locations in their communities and improve practical issues such as the booking system.
Section 10 - Marketing and communication
In this section, you should provide details about how you have communicated with families, schools, providers, and others about your HAF programme. You might include social media engagement, your advertising and marketing strategy, etc.
A marketing and communications plan consisted of promotion of the HAF programme via schools, food banks, social workers, email campaign via My Staffs (Council app), libraries, parish councils, councillors brief, website, and social media (Facebook and Instagram). Schools were furnished with a range of promotional materials which was particularly vital considering their role in distributing ‘School codes.’ Communication material included:
- PDF letters for schools to give to eligible families
- Graphics/text for their websites, school newsletters, and school social channels
- Suggested text for mobile messaging services
- Video link
- Banners and pull up advertising boards in community venues, e.g. libraries
View more on our Facebook page.
Section 11 - Additional resources, partnerships and aligning with other priorities
In this section, you should include information about whether you received any extra funding, support, resources, food, etc to support and enhance your programme. You might also include information about how you have aligned and joined up your HAF programme with other programmes and initiatives.
In support of aligning the delivery of the Programme with the priorities of our local Early Help partners, 15% of places were made available for children & families open to professionals across a range of services including Social Care, Education and Health. Professionals such as social workers, school staff, school nurses, SEND key workers and colleagues supporting young carers were able to book children on to sessions for Summer 23 and Winter 23/24.
18 children benefited from this offer in Summer and 115 children attended provision in Winter 23/24.
Section 12 - Any other information?
In this section, you should include any other information about your HAF programme that you want to share.
Staffordshire’s HAF programme was delivered by a mixed range of large organisations or small independent providers of which both provided comprehensive provision across the county.
The large organisations delivered HAF from a number of locations and venues and were effective in their delivery by providing a consistent standard of high-quality activities across neighbouring local authorities as well as Staffordshire which families recognised as a brand and they had a good track record which families could identify with.
The small independent providers were usually based in the heart of the communities they delivered HAF, and in some cases had previous knowledge and existing relationships with families which supported their engagement on the programme. There were occasions where these providers provided additional pastoral support to the whole family as they already had links with local community groups and networks to signpost families to other early help provision.
The Staffordshire HAF programme benefits from both provider types and will build on this approach for the next 12 months.
Printable version
A printable version of this information can be located using the below link.
HAF 2023-2024 annual report - printable (399 KB)