Holiday Clubs as Community Organizations

Abstract

Holiday clubs—publicly or privately operated organizations that provide child care services and healthy food to disadvantaged children in the United Kingdom (UK) when schools are not in session—are increasing in number. We know a good deal about the effectiveness of the clubs in terms of nutrition-related outcomes, but little is known about the anti-poverty resources these holiday clubs may provide. The possibility that club funding may be centralized through the national government requires a better understanding of holiday club resources. This study describes the range of resources that holiday clubs deliver and reports on how these resources are acquired and brokered by club staff and volunteers. We use data from seventeen clubs operating in disadvantaged communities in North East England during the summer of 2017, and find that clubs deliver an assortment of anti-poverty resources that are often tied to staff (personal and professional) networks.

Implementing Holiday Provision Programmes: A Qualitative Investigation of the Experiences of Senior Stakeholders

“…(Kneafsey et al, 2017: p. 631). Thus, findings from this study demonstrate that sustainable holiday provision requires cooperation, partnerships and networks of collaboration between community organizations, community members, government as well as the private sector (Dale & Newman, 2008;Stretesky et al, 2020). Building the capacity of community organizations delivering holiday provision can be achieved through strategies such as developing leadership skills of community members, organizational development to improve their existing services or to include additional services and/or provision, and improving organizational infrastructure to strengthen the links between organizations and agencies (Kneafsey et al, 2017).…”

“…Stakeholders highlighted the need to develop the capacity of school and community organizations to deliver holiday provision by developing partnerships, it is evident from the interviews that there is a reliance on skills of committed individuals. Previous research demonstrates the dependency on individual volunteers and staff to broker relationships and acquire resources for the benefit of the holiday club and its participants (Stretesky et al, 2020). Thus, there is fragility in the relationships between holiday clubs and partner agencies and the need to embed support for holiday provision within organizational structure.…”

“…It is important to note the limitations of this current study as this paper reports the views of a small, albeit diverse, sample of stakeholders responsible for facilitating and delivering holiday provision. Although the need for holiday provision and examples of good practices and issues of delivering holiday provision are supported by themes in pre-vious research of holiday club staff (Graham et al, 2016;Holley et al, 2019;Stretesky et al, 2020), further research is necessitated, by means of a process evaluation, to gain a more comprehensive knowledge of holiday programmes in terms of implementation, fidelity, dose and reach.…”

“…Holiday provision programmes are a grassroots response to the lack of statutory provision to support the nutritional and developmental needs of low-income children during the school holidays (Defeyter et al, 2019;Graham et al, 2016;Stretesky et al, 2020). Practitioners and academics generally refer to "holiday provision" as the provision of free food and activities to children living in deprived communities.…”

“…Previous academic research has investigated the benefits and issues of holiday provision from the views of staff delivering holiday provision and attendees of holiday clubs, and identified outcomes in terms of health and wellbeing for children as well as parents, staff and volunteers (Defeyter et al, 2015;Graham et al, 2016;Holley et al, 2019;Morgan et al, 2019). Moreover, recent research identified that holiday clubs relied upon networks and connections with other civil society organizations to deliver holiday provision (Stretesky et al, 2020). Nevertheless, there is a gap in the literature on the implementation of holiday provision and the adaption and fidelity of providing food provision within community and school based settings (Graham et al, 2016;Holley et al, 2019;Morgan et al, 2019).…”