What are the views and experiences of stakeholders regarding the need for holiday provision?^a

Financial hardship

Pressure on household budgets

Rent arrears

Zero-hour contracts

Changes to welfare and benefits

Risk of food insecurity

Rise in foodbank use

Lack of FSM provision

“We know that there is a high uptake free school meals and if it’s not high uptake of free school meal, we have high levels of poverty, low wages, high unemployment. One of the things we use to measure is the amount of rent arrears” (SS01).

“Some foodbanks were seeing a rise in the number of food parcels that they were given out to families during the school holidays” (SS05).

“Struggling” parents

Increased parental stress

Lack of support from extended family

Family breakdowns

Need for parental support

“Their extended families don’t have the money to help them. Everybody in that groups is struggling now so there’s less slack to give people more of a hand. You get a single parent with a couple of kids and it might be difficult to get help from their parents because they are struggling or their brothers and sisters are. There’s less money in the community as a whole” (P03)

Play and childcare provision

Lack of safe places for children to play

Reliance on extended family to help with childcare

Lack of local affordable activities

“There’s a lack of neighborhood resources of places to go, people might not feel safe to walk in parks and stuff. It’s a compound, complex problem of things that impact on you when you live in low-income neighborhoods, on low-incomes” (SS07)

Isolation

Families lack things to do

Isolated communities

“We saw more kids that hadn’t gone anywhere off the estate all holiday so you would have that oh what have you done last week, well nothing and that was becoming more prevalent” (SS02)

What are the views and experiences of policy makers and key stakeholders in terms of good practice?

Identify families and communities in need

Focus on deprived communities

Offer universal provision

Reduce stigma

“It’s a universal benefit because I think that there’s potentially could be a lot of stigma attached, so if you are just trying to go for those people that qualify then it doesn’t work but what can happen is a more targeted approach in more deprived areas and so therefore you are kind of doing that by proxy” (SS12)

Develop capacity of community organizations to deliver holiday provision

Use existing community assets

Development of partnerships & networking

Develop club capacity to provide food and activities

Provide training and resources

Flexibility of holiday provision permitted

“We may work with a local community group to help them to commission a holiday scheme and that maybe fundraising, bringing in appropriate professional organization that’s trusted and we know meet quality assurance guidelines that can work within the community, with that community group to be able to deliver that” (SS11)

“I think it’s important that different approaches are used in different areas depending on the local need and local desire really” (SS12)

Recruiting and upskilling volunteers

Use community members to deliver provision

Upskill volunteers

Recruit young people as volunteer peer mentors

“A lot of the volunteers involved were from the wider community and they found it very beneficial and we saw an increase in their skills” (SS05)

What are the views and experiences of stakeholders regarding the main barriers to effective delivery?

Capacity of holiday club

Type of provision offered restricted by club facilities and resources

Reliance on skills of committed individuals

Postcode lottery of holiday club settings

“There is a responsibility of providing and enabling environments and core infrastructure that doesn’t exist and so it has been picked up in an ad hoc way, in a very postcode lottery type way where there is, you know, community activists” (SS07)