Rotherham Healthy Holidays Annual Report

Rotherham’s Healthy Holiday Programme continues to be successful, however, we are continuing to strengthen the programme to meet the needs of children, families and communities. We take on board learning from each delivery and reflect on what is working well and areas we can develop further.

There have been four areas of particular focus in the 24-25 year.

• Increasing provision and attendance of secondary age children.
• Support new providers with the foundations of becoming a HAF provision.
• Engaging new families with the programme.
• Offer a programme of varied activities.

Increasing provision and attendance of secondary age children

Primarily our Healthy Holiday camps gain the majority of attendance from primary aged children. Feedback from the secondary aged children given to providers was that they did wanted camps tailored to secondary age children, rather than mixed caps for all age ranges.

To address this, some providers supported secondary aged children attending their camps in becoming mentors for the younger children during the sessions. This supported the young people to develop their leadership skills and encouraged them to attend the camps and engage in activities. This gave the older children a sense of achievement and helped develop their confidence and aspirations.

Some providers identified that secondary aged children may want to engage in a camp which starts later in the day, therefore, some camps ran through the afternoon to accommodate this. This supported an increase in secondary aged children attending the camps who put this in place.

We hope to continue this and develop new strategies for increasing our secondary reach in 2025-26.

Support new providers with the foundations of becoming a HAF provision.

During 2024-2025 the Healthy Holidays Programme experienced an influx of applications from new providers keen to develop and run a HAF camp. We offered support to these providers, ensuring they are equipped with the knowledge to set up and run an effective HAF camp. One provider set up a new company and worked hard to do this in time for the Easter programme. The HAF team offered support and knowledge to support them in establishing and growing their camp and they ran a successful Easter programme. This engaged new families and children to the Healthy Holidays Programme from this school and area.

Engaging new families with the programme

Data and feedback provided by children and families shows that children are enjoying the holiday camps and come back each programme, evidencing how valued the programme is by children and families.

In 2024-2025 we worked to increase the engagement of new children with the programme.

What did we do?

• Worked with Early Help, Social Care and other services to promote the programme, enabling these services to support more children and families access the programme.
• Worked with providers to link them with neighbouring schools, improving communication, and supporting the engagement of new and existing children and families.
• Provided drop-in sessions with community services to promote the programmes and support families to book on to holiday camps.
• Commissioned a festive event during the winter holidays to engage children who may not have attended a Healthy Holidays camp before, giving a taste of the programme.

We continue to work closely with Rotherham’s communities to identify new ways we can reach eligible children, making this valuable opportunity more accessible.

Offer a programme of varied activities

We want to ensure that children have a variety of activities available to them, to suit every child’s enjoyment. In response to the feedback from the children attending the Healthy Holidays Programme we worked on offering activities the children would like to experience.

In 2024-2025 this has included:

• Football
• Boxing
• Junior Gym sessions
• Swimming
• BMX Cycling
• Parkour
• Rugby
• Cricket
• Multi- sports
• Dance
• Drama
• Yoga
• Arts and Crafts
• Media Making
• Filming
• STEM activities
• Sensory activities
• First Aid learning
• Keyboard lessons
• Activities at Crowden
• Trips to Gulliver’s Kingdom

The feedback from children throughout 2024-2025 shows the positive impact and joy these activities gave to them, paired with allowing the children to learn new skills and try something they may not normally engage in. We will continue to offer a variety of enriching activities for future programmes.