Access to Childcare Fund: phase 2 - evaluation report

9. Outcomes for children and young people

Summary:

• Positive impacts on children’s mental health outcomes included increased enjoyment and fun, fostered by a child-led approach to activities and individual care plans (particularly for children with ASN).
• Projects had also identified potential mental health problems and addressed these through signposting to further support or providing additional support themselves. Strong relationships with SACC staff were key to enabling this.
• Projects achieved increased physical wellbeing for children through facilitating active play and physical activity; providing access to food; and creating a safe place for children outside of school hours.
• SACC was also seen to strengthen children’s relationships (with both adults and peers) and develop their social skills. This was seen as particularly impactful among children with ASN who may face more challenges interacting with peers outside of a structured environment. This was supported by having a mix of ages, caring staff and continuity of staff.

This chapter covers how, and to what extent, the processes and activities carried out by the funded projects led to the desired outcomes for children attending the services. These outcomes are increased mental and physical wellbeing, and strengthened relationships.

Increasing mental wellbeing

Increased mental wellbeing came out strongly when participants discussed the ways in which children had benefitted from attending funded provision. This outcome was achieved through them enjoying being at SACC and having the opportunity to have fun, but also through more targeted mental health support or interventions.

Enjoyment and having fun

Parents generally felt their children enjoyed spending time at SACC, and that this boosted their mood when they were there (or even after they left). Children described various things that they enjoyed about their SACC, although this tended to relate to liking the activities or spending time with friends or the project staff. For children with ASN, SACC could be particularly impactful by giving them the opportunity to get involved in activities that were usually inaccessible to them:

“He absolutely loves it, he is doing [activity], he just loves it […] I think about kind of typical children that are his age, they are what, some of them are going to football five times a week and they have different things, whereas he doesn’t have that. But it is geared at the right level for him, and it gives him a sense of freedom.” (Parent)

Taking a child-led, flexible approach supported creating enjoyable provision through tailoring provision to children’s needs or preferences. This typically included providing children with a choice of a range of activities:

“It’s fun because the teachers are kind and you get to play and get to do whatever you want, […] and you get to stay with your friends. You get to play tig, you get to go out if you want to, but there’s lots of games.” (Child)

“They have got different choices, whether or not it is like a sensory story or something else [and] he can say, no, or he might misbehave and then they know actually…like the staff are very intuitive, and they just know him, and they know to move him onto the next thing before there is any difficulties.” (Parent)

Having individual support plans for children was cited as another way in which projects could tailor their provision, particularly for children with ASN. Close partnership working was seen to facilitate this. For example, one project received behavioural plans from the school they were based in, which fed into their own planning.

“[We create care plans] to help with their social skills, or just to help with their inclusion into the service and taking part in the activities. There is a lot of work with Headteachers in schools to share chronologically of events, communications, IEPs (Individual Education Plans), […] there is a lot of networking and meetings that are required to get that up to date.” (Project lead)

As noted in Chapter 5, positive relationships between staff and parents and children were an important factor in how well projects understood the families’ needs. This, alongside having effective processes to collect and implement feedback, also increased projects’ ability to be adaptive and responsive:

“They ask so heavily for parental feedback, so they ask you, ‘What clubs did you enjoy?’ There is one sitting in the inbox at the moment, and it is like ‘What did you not like? What days’ work? What times work?’” (Parent)

Strong relationships between staff and children facilitated this and were particularly important when providing for children with ASN, who may require more of an individual, tailored approach to engagement:

Support with mental health

The second way in which projects increased children’s mental wellbeing was by identifying and addressing situations in which children may be in need of additional mental health support.

Again, close relationships between children and staff were seen as important in facilitating this since, when staff knew children well, they were more likely to pick up on any unmet needs. Project leads and stakeholders also mentioned that, when children felt comfortable with project staff, it gave them a further opportunity to disclose information about their experiences or how they were feeling which they may not have wanted to share with teachers or parents.

There were examples of projects supporting children’s mental health needs either by sharing information with relevant partners or using their own resources to meet children’s needs where possible. For example, one parent recalled how her son had been unhappy after starting school and SACC staff suggested that he would benefit from joining their breakfast club to give him an opportunity to transition more easily into the school day:

“That is exactly what needed to happen, and once he started going in the morning it became, it was like night and day, it was like a transformation in his behaviour […] He is getting that opportunity to regulate through play, no matter what his emotions are, how he is feeling, he is having that opportunity through play in the morning to start his day.” (Parent)

Another example of this was St Mirin’s ‘school specialism’ offer for children who were experiencing difficulties in class. Staff who have completed trauma-informed training spend time with children one-to-one during school hours to work through any issues they may be dealing with. Monitoring report evidence indicated the success of this approach, with increases recorded in child wellbeing using the Glasgow Motivation and Wellbeing Profile. The project lead also shared anecdotal evidence of children no longer needing help from the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service (CAMHS) as a result of this early intervention approach:

“Some of the children we work with no longer need CAMHS and we have been enough to support that child back into learning, and obviously if they are not learning the attainment gap is getting bigger, life choices and all that is reducing. […] Yes, it is expensive, but when you think of what it is that we are preventing, it is truly early intervention.” (Project lead)

Other projects described disclosure procedures where they would share information with the school or with parents as appropriate, and signpost children onto further mental health support.

Increasing physical wellbeing

There were three main ways in which children’s physical wellbeing was promoted across the projects, namely providing opportunities for physical activity and exercise; improving children’s access to or relationships with food; and keeping children safe.

Physical activity

This was the main way in which provision was seen as supporting children’s physical health. There were parents who felt that the impact of this went further than improving children’s fitness levels, but also impacted positively on their mood, behaviour and, in some cases, their sleep.

Elements that helped achieve this included providing active activities, such as sports, as well as having outdoor spaces that facilitated these and allowed children to run around.

Access to food

There was widespread agreement among participants that including healthy food at SACC activities was important. Again, providing children with choice was helpful in terms of making sure that children wanted or felt able to eat the food provided, although there were still cases where children did not like what was offered and needed to bring their own food. However, parents noted that incorporating food preparation could help to encourage children to try or eat more things:

“He doesn’t eat like fruit and vegetables here, but for some reason he eats fruit down there [...] I don't know if it is watching everybody else eating, so he will join in with them, but in the house, he is like, ‘oh no, I will not eat that’. So, that is good.” (Parent)

“Sometimes it's a real struggle to get her to eat her tea […] [but] she'll come home with what they've made [at after school club] and she'll eat that for her tea and she will sit and eat it because she's had the opportunity to make it herself.” (Parent)

Safety

There was a view that the projects provided a safe environment for children to go to after school, and in certain situations a safer place than alternative options - they provided a safer alternative for older children who would otherwise have nothing to do or have to travel elsewhere independently after school. For example, one parent recalled that their son had been harassed after school before but when their son was at the after-school club, they were reassured that he was in a safe place.

A stakeholder also mentioned that, when staff built close relationships with children, this could (and had) lead to disclosures that raised child protection issues that could then be investigated further. This was enhanced by close partnership working with social work or other relevant organisations. Similarly, one stakeholder highlighted the role that SACC practitioners could play in supporting child protection, by facilitating social work visits in an environment outside of school or home.

Strengthened relationships and social skills

The opportunity to socialise with peers and project staff at SACC came out strongly when children were asked about why they enjoyed going (as well as socialising with other children).

Relationships with peers

Both parents and staff gave examples of children who had gained confidence and social skills from attending provision.

“He's a lot more sociable. Before he wouldn't mix with other kids, but now he does.” (Parent)

Parents living in rural areas pointed out that this was important for their children, who may otherwise be more isolated outside of school hours.

It was also thought to be especially relevant for children with ASN, who may face more challenges interacting with peers outside of a structured and supportive environment:

“He is not able to go out and play with other kids or he can’t go out the back and play himself and things like that, so I think this definitely helps him in the sense of he is able to have that social interaction which he might not have had an opportunity to do.” (Parent)

There was a view that having children of different ages being able to play together was also something that facilitated social skills, which children don’t experience as much in school. There were examples of younger children learning from older children, while older children learned to be nurturing and take on responsibility for helping younger ones.

Relationships with other adults

Children typically liked the staff running their SACC, with parents describing close relationships where children had favourite workers who they knew well. When children had close relationships with the adults working at the projects, this depended to an extent on individual staff being friendly, caring and fun to be around. However, this was typically underpinned by having a child-centred culture and in some cases, access to good quality training for staff.

Where possible, having consistency of staff was also viewed positively as this helped children to build trusting and enduring relationships.

However, there were some examples of staff behaviour that children didn’t like (such as shouting) that could be off-putting for children attending.