Grant Funding Re-Opens for Holiday Activities and Food Programme

Leicestershire County Council, Barnardo's, Voluntary Action Leicestershire, alongside us at Leicester-Shire & Rutland Sport, have re-opened the grant funding for the Holiday Activities and Food Programme for a one-off round to ensure all the available budget has been fully allocated.

A significant proportion of the budget has been awarded to 20 projects so far, for purposes of supporting a Holiday Activities and Food programme for Leicestershire, to take place over the summer of 2019.

Barnardo's will operate as the local coordinating organisation for this programme, which will make grant funding available for any organisation that is able to deliver Holiday Activities which include Food provision, within Leicestershire, during the summer of 2019.

One of the objectives of the programme is to enable provision to be inclusive and accessible to all Free-School Meal (FSM) eligible children in Leicestershire.

The grant programme is therefore designed to develop a more efficient and joined-up approach to free holiday provision for disadvantaged children; and to ensure there is enough good quality free holiday provision to meet the demand from children eligible for free school meals in the local authority area during the 2019 summer holidays.

As a result of this, the aim is for children (and where appropriate, their parents) who attend this provision:

•to eat more healthily over the summer holidays;

•to be more active over the summer holidays;

•to take part in engaging and enriching activities which support the development of resilience, character and wellbeing and other skills;

•to be safe and not to be socially isolated;

•to have greater knowledge of health and nutrition; and

•to be more engaged with school and other local services and to have greater knowledge and awareness of local free holiday provision.

We'd like to invite interested parties to apply for their piece of this funding.

What kind of holiday provision are they looking for?

The Department for Education want to test models offering holiday clubs and food programmes for longer than those traditionally available. Therefore, they want Barnardo's to work with providers towards children accessing provision 4 hours per day, 4 days per week, for 4 summer holiday weeks – "4:4:4" provision.

Importantly, this is "working towards" 4:4:4 provision for children. It isn't compulsory – we just need clubs to develop towards this aim over the funding period. This might be, for example, by increasing their own hours or by working with a neighbouring organisation to share 4:4:4 provision between them.

What is expected of organisations applying?

The programme is open to all types of organisations, including charities and other third sector organisations, as well as existing holiday club providers who can demonstrate the ability to develop their existing provision to include food provision for Free School Meal-eligible children.

Schools can also apply if they are operating holiday clubs.

Barnardo's is also supporting organisations to meet national standards through their holiday provision. They will be working with Leicestershire County Council, Voluntary Action Leicester-Shire and us at Leicestershire & Rutland Sport to offer a series of short, focused workshops.

These will help organisations to develop their provision towards meeting national standards in food and activity provision. Those that achieve them will receive a recognised quality award.

Attending the four workshops of two hours each will be a condition of organisations receiving the funding – multiple options around Leicestershire will be

What do I need to apply?

A short application form has been developed If you're interested, please submit your application by Friday 5th July 2019. Successful organisations will be required to submit some additional information at a later stage.

More information: https://www.lrsport.org/haf