An evaluation of Southwark Council’s summer 2022 Holiday Activities and Food programme (PHIRST Fusion)

Background

In 2018, the Department for Education (DfE) first piloted the Holiday Activities and Food programme (HAF). It was a scheme that provided funding to a select number of local authorities to coordinate and deliver healthy food and enriching activities to disadvantaged children during the school holidays. National evaluation by Ecorys UK and Durham University published in December 2020 detailed favourable outcomes for those young people attending, their parents, and for the majority of providers.

In October 2021, DfE announced that they would be investing £200 million per year for three years into HAF. This funding is to expand the programme to enable all local authorities in England to provide such services to children aged 5 to 16-years old and eligible for Free School Meals (FSM) over the Easter, Summer and Winter holidays. We will be undertaking an evaluation of the 2022 programme in the London Borough of Southwark, with our primary focus on the summer holiday programme.

Ecorys UK has been commissioned to deliver evaluation of the extended national programme.

As part of the HAF, the London Borough of Southwark Council were awarded £1,383,160 to fund food and activities for the financial year 2021/2022 and further funds to continue delivery through the school summer holidays in 2022. Working closely with Southwark Council we, the PHIRST Fusion team will undertake an evaluation which is complementary to the process and outcome evaluation to be proposed by Ecorys UK.

Methods

We are currently undertaking an evaluability assessment process to identify suitable methods. We are working closely with the HAF delivery partners contracted to Southwark Council, to identify and develop an evaluation strategy. We will focus on methods that will provide added insight regarding the contextual factors associated with implementation and the experiences and perceptions of the children within the programme, their parents, and service deliverers.

Furthermore, Southwark Council would like to gain an insight as to what learning can be gained in relation to their existing health and wellbeing services, as well as council-wide strategies on food insecurity, sustainable food and climate change, and healthy weight.

We will take a participatory approach to method development using a series of stakeholder workshops and site visits, which will include children and parents/carers, during Easter 2022 to produce an illustrated version of the theory of change. This will be included as part of a draft protocol for the evaluation, which is expected to be submitted for review by June 2022. We anticipate commencing primary data collection in July 2022.

Outputs

Working with partners at Southwark Council, we will use the most appropriate methods to disseminate the findings and to mobilise knowledge from the evaluation. This is likely to take the form of a full report tailored to needs of the council, as well as a policy brief containing recommendations aligned to the Council’s policy objectives. Other knowledge mobilisation methods will be explored such as webinars and face-to-face presentations. All outputs will be informed by appropriate patient public involvement.