Holiday, Activities and Food Plus App

Gateshead Council currently run a number of holiday camps in the Christmas, Easter, and Summer school holidays for children up to age 16, through the Holiday Activities and Food (HAF) Scheme.

This is part of a national programme run, with funding coming from the Department for Education, further information on the national programme is available on the DfE's website.

The camps are popular with under 11s, with a high number of participants, but has struggled to attract older age groups.

The Council changed their approach to the 12 to 16 age range in August 2023 to increase participation.

The trial had 40 children given paper vouchers for: • Independent travel via a 7 day all zones bus/metro travel pass. • Vouchers for 'anytime' activities (such as cinema tickets, 10-pin bowling sessions, Go Gateshead Gyms access). • Bookings for scheduled activities (such as craft activities at an identified location, or extra-curricular sessions at an educational institution). • Vouchers so they young people could access grab-and-go food, snacks, and drinks at identified outlets.

The trial was managed by HAF staff using 'paper records', and direct contact with the children to issue the vouchers.

The trial was a success, increasing participation in the group as hoped, and Gateshead Council are now looking to run a similar scheme but for 400 children from the Summer 2024 school holidays.

To facilitate the increased participant numbers an App has been identified as a requirement, not only to ensure greater access for children, but also to facilitate the efficient management of the scheme by the HAF team.

Gateshead Council has appointed a developer to build a customer facing App for use on children's phones where they can access the vouchers and information on the scheme, but with a web-based administration function for the HAF team to use in the facilitation of the scheme.

The developer will build and maintain this App system, which will be hosted on the Council servers and will remain the property of Gateshead Council, should we wish to sell this on to other public sector organisations (other Local Authorities) to run and manage their own schemes.