Healthy Holidays is the local name for the Department for Education’s Holiday Activity and Food Programme (HAF). The programme provides funding for organisations to run clubs over the Easter, summer and Christmas holidays for children eligible for benefits related Free School Meals (and a small number of children eligible for other reasons).
The Holidays Activity and Food Programme aims to provide physical and enriching activities together with a hot meal to eligible children and young people. The programme seeks to promote nutritional education and healthy lifestyle messages as well as offering opportunities to signpost families to additional sources of support.
- Healthy Holidays Leeds
- Funding
- Unique children reached
- Steering group
- Delivery partners
- Marketing and promotion
- Extra funding, support, resources and food
- Highlights and successes of the programme
- Food offer
- Enriching activity
- Physical activity
- Nutritional education
- Signposting and referrals
Healthy Holidays Leeds
If only we could bottle what the clubs do for all our children!
The Healthy Holidays programme in Leeds is coordinated by the Council’s Financial Inclusion Team and is delivered via three separate strands of provision, namely schools, third sector and Leeds City Council. The schools and Leeds City Council programmes are commissioned centrally with the third sector provision being administered by Leeds Community Foundation on behalf of and in close conjunction with the Financial Inclusion Team’s Healthy Holidays Coordinator. This joint approach ensures consistency in terms of quality and enables the sharing of best practice across the city’s programme.
Funding 2024-25
| Department for Education funding for Leeds 2024 | £3,449,690 |
| Administrative expenditure (this includes all of the costs Leeds City Council have incurred in carrying out the administrative functions of the HAF coordination). | £344,841 |
Unique children reached
| Easter | Primary-aged | Secondary-aged |
|---|---|---|
| Eligible for FSM, non-SEND | 2696 | 833 |
| Eligible for FSM and SEND | 491 | 179 |
| Not eligible for FSM, non-SEND | 325 | 161 |
| Not eligible for FSM and SEND | 117 | 56 |
| Total number of attendees | 3629 | 1229 |
| Summer | Primary-aged | Secondary-aged |
|---|---|---|
| Eligible for FSM, non-SEND | 1904 | 447 |
| Eligible for FSM and SEND | 345 | 61 |
| Not eligible for FSM, non-SEND | 279 | 94 |
| Not eligible for FSM and SEND | 56 | 17 |
| Total number of attendees | 2584 | 619 |
| Christmas | Primary-aged | Secondary-aged |
|---|---|---|
| Eligible for FSM, non-SEND | 972 | 290 |
| Eligible for FSM and SEND | 165 | 44 |
| Not eligible for FSM, non-SEND | 125 | 56 |
| Not eligible for FSM and SEND | 25 | 13 |
| Total number of attendees | 1287 | 403 |
| Yearly total | Primary-aged | Secondary-aged |
|---|---|---|
| Eligible for FSM, non-SEND | 5572 | 1570 |
| Eligible for FSM and SEND | 1001 | 284 |
| Not eligible for FSM, non-SEND | 729 | 311 |
| Not eligible for FSM and SEND | 198 | 86 |
| TOTAL number of attendees | 7500 | 2251 |
| Total = 9751 |
Steering group
- Leeds Community Foundation
- Fareshare Yorkshire
- Rethink Food
- Hamara
- Give A Gift
- Leeds City Council – Chief Officer Community Hubs, Welfare and Business Support
- Leeds City Council – Youth Service
- Leeds City Council – Public Health
- Leeds City Council – Active Leeds
- Leeds City Council – Breeze
- Leeds City Council – Children and Families
- Leeds City Council – Financial Inclusion
- Leeds City Council – Communities
- Leeds City Council – Catering Leeds
Delivery partners
Schools
- 2Gether Cluster
- Allerton Bywater Primary School
- Alwoodley Primary School
- Beechwood Primary School Beeston Primary School
- Bishop Young Academy
- Bruntcliffe Academy
- Carr Manor Community School
- Elements Primary School
- Grimes Dyke Primary School
- Headingley and Kirkstall Schools Partnership/Cluster
- Holy Family Catholic Primary School
- Hovingham Primary School
- Inner East Cluster A
- Kippax Greenfield Primary School
- Leeds City Academy
- Leeds City College
- Leeds East Academy
- Leeds West Academy
- Manor Wood Primary School and Children's Centre
- Morley Cluster
- Mount St Mary's Catholic High School
- Park Spring Primary
- Parklands Primary School
- Ralph Thoresby School
- Reach Primary Learning Centre
- Robin Hood Primary School
- Roundhay School
- Seacroft Manston Cluster
- Shire Oak Primary school
- Southroyd Primary School
- St Bartholomew's Primary School
- St Josephs Catholic Primary School
- Strawberry Fields Primary School
- Temple Learning Academy
- The Stephen Longfellow Academy
- Trinity Academy Leeds
- West SILC
- Wetherby High School
Third Sector
- BARCA Leeds
- CATCH Leeds
- Champions Community Sport and Health CIC
- Complete Woman CIC
- Connecting Crossgates
- Dance Action Zone Leeds
- East Leeds Project
- Getaway Girls
- GFS Community Enterprise (The Old Fire Station)
- GIPSIL
- Give A Gift
- Groundwork Yorkshire (Ardsley and Lofthouse)
- Groundwork Yorkshire (Morley)
- Groundwork Yorkshire (Rothwell)
- Guiseley Community Foundation
- Hamara Healthy Living Centre
- Health for All (Middleton and Belle Isle)
- Health for All (Swarcliffe and Whinmoor)
- Health for All (Beeston and Cottingley)
- Holbeck Together
- Hunslet Club
- Hunslet Rugby Foundation
- Hyde Park Source
- Kirkstall Valley Development Trust
- Leeds GATE Gypsy and Traveller Exchange
- Leeds Mencap
- Leeds United Foundation (Armley)
- Leeds United Foundation (Beeston)
- Leeds United Foundation (Halton Moor)
- Left Bank Leeds
- Moortown West Community Association
- New Wortley Community Association
- Nigerian Yorkshire Communities Network UK CIC
- Reestablish
- Seacroft Community on Top
- St Giles Trust
- St Luke’s Cares
- Stitch-Up CIC
- Team Daniel
- Yorkshire Contemporary
- The Youth Association
- The Zone
Leeds City Council
- Armley Community Hub and Library
- Dewsbury Road Community Hub and Library
- Thackray Museum of Medicine
- Reginald Centre Community Hub and Library
- Breeze Little London
- Breeze South Leeds Youth Hub
- Breeze Bramley St Peter’s Primary School
- Breeze Castleton Primary School
Marketing and promotion
Healthy Holidays in Leeds during 2024 was promoted in multiple ways reflecting the diverse strands of provision in the city but included social media, Leeds City Council and provider websites, traditional flyers and banners as well as direct mailings from Healthy Holidays, through schools and third sector partners. As with each year, we have anecdotal evidence that word of mouth played its part in the promotion of the scheme with eligible families. Significant promotion of the new booking system was undertaken encouraging eligible families to sign up to the scheme and included the use of a local authority billboard site in Armley, an area of high need.
Celebration of the programme took place through social media, traditional media, including local tv news, provider celebration events and presentations to our stakeholders.
Extra funding, support, resources and food
During 2024, our Healthy Holidays providers told us they linked and forged partnerships with other organisations to support their programmes, including commercial retail partners. We were approached centrally by a local Community Champion for Morrisons and have distributed small but regular donations to our providers. We funded internal council services and external partners to support provision, this included food from Catering Leeds, FareShare, Rethink, Give a Gift, Hamara, and exciting experience sessions, such as through West Leeds Activity Centre, Herd Farm, Parks and Countryside and swimming.
Highlights: Successes and challenges of the Programme
The Healthy Holidays programme in Leeds during 2024 had great success but also significant challenge through the implementation of a new booking system in advance of the summer school holidays. The new system was mandated in order to verify eligibility for all children and young people accessing the Leeds programme.
The breadth of activities was extensive and many providers offered family trips, eg. visits to the coast and Lotherton Hall’s Christmas experience, bringing added value to the programme. Much of the food on offer was of the highest quality, prepared and made on site, such as that cooked by the dedicated chef at Herd Farm. Nutritional education for both children and families was supported through our Healthy Eating Toolkits and bespoke delivery partner provision enhanced this element of the programme at each delivery period. Signposting families to additional sources of support was critically important during 2024 given the ongoing high cost of living and our Community Hub provision really pioneered this work linking families to other Council services, including digital support; NHS and third sector partners who frequently operate out of the same Hub building. These are just examples of the great work which took place under Healthy Holidays Leeds in 2024.
Although often hard to quantify, Healthy Holidays provision had clear impact resulting in positive change and learning:
Child 1 has recently moved country from Zimbabwe and with a language barrier was finding making new friendships, challenging in school time. HH provided a great opportunity for him to meet lots of students in a relaxed fun environment and has made new friends with students in different year groups. Parents were really thankful for the opportunity and support.
Two of the children who attended had just been removed from the care of their mother. They have been subject to a CP plan for over 2 years due to severe domestic violence, drug and alcohol misuse, financial instability and neglect.
The children were removed by the Police the week before the holidays and the holiday scheme gave these children some stability and normality in an environment that they are used to, with familiar adults. The provision enabled the children to play and engage with their peers and removed them from the worries of everyday life - it allowed them to behave as children rather than having to be responsible for themselves and a younger sibling, which is what has been the norm for them during other holidays.
The major individual we saw continue to get huge benefit from the course was a young girl who had attended a few days over the Summer and again a few days at Christmas. She was new to the area in the Summer and her mother had moved away from her previous area due to significant domestic abuse. The girl had been incredibly shy initially, knew absolutely nobody and was very reluctant to participate in any group activities. Over the Summer and Easter programmes her confidence dramatically improved, she made lots of new friends and her self esteem and mental health were clearly positively affected. This time it was really heartening to see her arrive with a big group of friends and participate happily in any group activities. I heard her say to a friend 'this was the start of me settling in and I'm so happy that people really encouraged me to come and meet new people.
Reflecting on the impact of the programme on our pupils, we really felt it had a huge collective impact and it is difficult for us to pick out one particular pupil who got the most benefit from it. However one pupil really felt a significant impact from the programme. His family have recently moved to the country from Romania and have severe financial issues. He started school just after Christmas and for a variety of reasons his attendance has been patchy at best but we decided to invite him to then camp in the hope it might have a 'knock on' effect on his attendance when school restarted for the Summer.
It was great to see him turn up on the first day and the coaches made a special effort to include him in all the activities and he clearly had a good time and subsequently came back every day. On the last day he said to one of the coaches 'this camp has really helped me settle in and make friends' and his attendance at school since the camp has been much more regular.
Food offer
Food provision throughout 2024 was of a high standard in general with all provision meeting children and young people’s dietary needs and cultural requirements. Catering Leeds provided food for some of the schools, all Community Hubs and the Breeze Youth Service provision.
Other providers commissioned local catering services but several also chose to focus heavily upon this element of their programme and involve children and young people in the preparation and cooking of meals from scratch.
Several clubs, including those specialising in SEND provision, incorporated restaurant experiences within their programmes offering participants the opportunity to ‘eat out’ which may well be beyond the reach of many families, especially given the ongoing high cost of living.
Our central funding of cultural and surplus food hubs brought significant added value to the Programme across Leeds enabling providers to add snacks or breakfast to their offer; provide family hampers or insert cookery and baking into their activities.
Enriching activity
Parent and 4 children, new to Leeds after fleeing an abusive relationship. Working with the cluster around establishing themselves in the community, settling into new schools and support with boundaries and routines. Three primary children receiving free school meals and one nursery aged child. They all attended the family trip to Cannon Hall Farm, packed lunch provided for parent and children. Feedback from the family was: "It was an amazing and happy day. Children were playing in amazing play ground area (outdoor), amazing indoor area, watching different kinds of animals and sheep racing. Thank you is not enough for you all".
In Leeds we were delighted with the breadth of activities on offer to our young people and are proud about our enrichment within Healthy Holidays: We saw headteachers leading provision within schools offering ‘forest school’, waterslides and encouraging tasting of home grown fruit and vegetables; Leeds City College undertook a programme targeting young people aged 15-16 aiming to familiarise them with the college environment at a less busy period than term time and demonstrating the breadth of opportunity offered under the umbrella of ‘digital skills’; Leeds City Council’s Community Hub provision continued the well-developed and comprehensive programme working with libraries; Active Leeds and commissioned arts and theatre groups and within the third sector we saw growing, picking and outdoor cooking sessions as well as programmes with an emphasis on sewing and craft activity. We are confident there was provision tailored for eligible children within Leeds and the range of activities available was too extensive to detail in full- but we’ve included one provider’s activities over the summer as an example of how fantastic the schemes are:
RC racing, pamper day, BBQs, woodland sculpture making, woodwork, bee keeper experience, aero-ball, climbing wall, den building, Lego robotics, Pot Gang, ten pin bowling, laser quest, inflatables, golf, assault course, school food showdown, virtual reality, coding workshops, drama workshops, circus activities, paintballing, planetarium, amazing dance, Minecraft, archery, skateboarding, desert survival workshops, botanical arts, printing workshop, animal puppets, water zorbing, African dance, cookery workshops, Bake Off, performances and plays, football training, rugby, forensic crime workshops, summer weather science workshop, astronaut training, eco workshops, become a history hunter – archaeology, bushcraft, multi-sports, Masterchef
Physical activity
100% of our providers met the framework standard.
In Leeds 100% of our providers met the Framework Standard of children and young people engaging in 60 minutes of physical activity during the Healthy Holidays session and all were assessed as either ‘Good’ or ‘Excellent’ in this area. Again, the types of activities on offer were broad, ranging from traditional football and multi-sports based camps to dance based workshops and activity centre assault courses. We continued to encourage off site trips as part of Healthy Holiday provision and this promoted participation in activities such as ice skating, roller blading and high ropes. We continued to invest in ‘Swimming Catch Up’ sessions for children and young people who may have missed out on lessons due to previous Covid restrictions or who have otherwise low attainment in respect of this lifesaving skill. Providers worked hard to ensure sessions, especially in relation to physical activity, were accessible and tailored to the children and young people they were working with. For example, one provider worked with Active Leeds to secure dedicated swimming for young people in need of the tuition but who would not have attended a session with younger children.
Nutritional education
We did however see particular continued benefits for one of our attendees who has been coming for the past 2 years. When he first started coming he was overweight and had a number of different health conditions, including very painful eczema. A lot of his issues were diet, lifestyle and lack of exercise related and it has been rewarding to see how he is now significantly fitter, healthier and has a much better BMI. He has fully embraced the concept of healthy eating and regular exercise and as a result is a much happier individual with far better school attendance.
The staff on the programme over the past 2 years have spent a lot of time working one to one with him offering him diet and exercise advice and after initial reluctance, he has included much of this advice in his daily diet and his weekly exercise programme, both in and out of school.
The comprehensive Healthy Eating Toolkits remained available to providers along with along with information and games developed for the scheme. Providers often suggested they struggles with this element of the programme. However, through Quality Assurance it often became clear that nutrition and healthy lifestyle messages were embedded within provision, especially the multi sports based clubs where hydration and healthy food were highlighted as critical to athletic performance.
Signposting and referrals
Child A receives FSM and is new to school. At his previous school, Child A had poor attendance. He lives with Mum who has shared with us that she has anxiety, takes prescription medication, and has a mental health support worker. Mum finds it difficult to engage face-to-face with school staff. We contacted Mum by text message and email to send information and gain consent for her child to attend the Healthy Holiday provision.
We also agreed to collect Child A if Mum felt unwell and was unable to bring him and our Inclusion Support worker in school agreed to deliver the Rethink Hamper to her home address. By supporting Mum, we have been able to build rapport with her and have gained her trust. Mum is now happy to speak to identified staff in school and ask for help when she is struggling with her mental health and finding it difficult to get her child to school. Since returning to school after the holidays, Child A has had 100% attendance.
The opportunity to signpost and refer families to further sources of support added value to the Healthy Holidays programme and included: Advice agencies; DWP; Employment and Skills; local Council Tax Support and Free School Meals; Leeds School Uniform Exchange; Healthy Start and many more. Sessions also raised awareness of providers’ core term time activities promoting participation for children and young people on an ongoing basis.
Thank you for all your work and support. I know how hard it is to evidence the amazing benefits that the programme brings, and the difference that it makes to so many lives. The below quote really stood out as an example of how the clubs support children's wider wellbeing outcomes and benefit children far beyond the holiday periods. 8 year old female, older sister and younger sibling, very anxious, timid and shy. Family engagement with school was limited prior to the Easter holidays but this has improved significantly since the club and the whole family is more engaging with school. Child participated in all the activities and was very responsive to others and mum was surprised and super proud of her achievements. The confidence of the family has improved and this is a sound foundation to build her up and work on barriers to effectively reduce her anxiety and encourage participation in other activities. If only we could bottle what the clubs do for all our children!
