Northumberland's Activities and Food (HAF) Programme 2021 - 2024

For the three-year period 2021-2024 NECPT had a grant of £325,000 from the National Lottery Community Fund to support further programmes and promoted the extension of place-based provision for children and young people.

The grant supported additional activity to the Holiday Activities and Food (HAF) programme and delivered what is known in shorthand as ‘HAF plus’. Of particular importance has been the development of Leading Link’s Young Leaders programme, a family offer to complement the holiday activities for children, additional investment for those with SEND needs and the development of work readiness activities for those approaching school leaving age.

The NECPT 2024 report describes the context and challenges of child poverty in the North East and highlights key findings from the independent evaluation. It also summarises the added value delivered as a result of the Lottery grant to NECPT, the report can be found here.

The Northumbria University evaluation reports for Summer 2022 and 2023 can be found here.

The three-year programme has now ended and the report on the end of the grant project is available here. To read about the impact of the programme over the three year period, please click here.

Video Source: Leading Link

Over the period of the NLCF grant NECPT has been able to provide funding support via Leading Link and Northumberland Council to enrich the government funded HAF offer by:

Enabling innovation and experiment in developing place-based activities to extend the reach of the HAF programme and broaden access to it.
Providing funding for family-based activities to engage parents and carers.
Supporting Leading Link’s development of the Young Leaders initiative to give intensive training and development support. Young Leaders have delivered activities in the HAF programme and in North Tyneside and Newcastle supported after school activities.
Helping Leading Link participate in the national ‘design sprint’ where 500 young people across the country came together to co-design activities and presented these to government officials and business leaders.