x
Share:
Liverpool City Council has been allocated funding by the Department of Education to provide holiday activities and healthy food for disadvantaged children. The programme will cover the summer and Christmas holidays in 2021. Merseyside Play Action Council (MPAC), in partnership with LCVS, has been awarded the contract to deliver the HAF programme in Liverpool.
The focus of the programme is on children eligible for benefits-related free school meals. Local authorities are asked to ensure that the offer of free holiday club provision is available for all children eligible for free school meals, although it is accepted that not all eligible children will choose to participate.
The aim of the programme is to make free places available to children eligible for free school meals for the equivalent of at least four hours a day, four days a week, for six weeks a year. This covers four weeks in the summer and a week’s worth of provision in the Christmas holidays in 2021. It will enable children and young people to:
- eat more healthily over the school holidays
- be more active during the school holidays
- take part in engaging and enriching activates which support the development of resilience, character, and well-being along with their wider education attainment
- be safe and not to be socially isolated
- have greater knowledge of health nutrition
- be more engaged with school and other local services
The Expression of Interest (EoI)
To ensure that as many children as possible have access to free holiday activities and food during the summer, we are asking local groups to complete an expression of interest/eligibility form, which you will find at the bottom of this page.
This will help us gauge the capacity in the city to deliver, and allow us to work on the logistics of providing funding and training. Please note, at this stage this is not an application for funding. MPAC will be in touch with eligible groups once all expressions of interest have been looked at. Activities can include play, sports, arts and culture etc.
The main elements for you to consider are;
1. Does your organisation work with children and young people in Liverpool?
2. Are you able to provide activities and food for a minimum of 4 weeks in the summer for at least 4 hours per day?
3. Are you a constituted group with appropriate policies and insurances in place (e.g. safeguarding)?
4. Are you able to take part in training sessions in the run up to the summer?
The EoI form should enable us to gauge whether your organisation is eligible for funding. We want to encourage as many local groups as possible to take part, so that as many children and young people as possible are able to take part.
We can offer free training and support across a range of issues, including meeting the School Food Standards, safeguarding etc. If you feel that you could provide a programme given this additional support, let us know via the EoI. We appreciate that not every group or organisation will be fully up-to-date with School Food Standards but please don’t let that be a barrier to you completing the EoI; we can support you, to make sure that you can work towards the standards as part of your programme.
There is a tight turnaround for the EoI, which is why we have kept it short.
Then please complete and return the form to info@merseyplay.com, no later than Friday 11 June 2021 (In Word format only please – no PDFs or scans).
Important note – Those organisations that are already funded as part of the Play Partnership via MPAC need not complete the EoI.
Want to know more?
MPAC will host an hour long Zoom briefing at 11am on Wednesday 2 June, to answer any questions.
Follow this link to join the meeting (this link will take you directly to the Zoom meeting, so click it at 11am on 2 June).
Meeting ID: 92230620387
Passcode:148119
Back to blog