Holiday, childcare and food programme - summer 2022: equality impact assessment

2. Data and evidence gathering, involvement and consultation

The 2022 Summer Holiday Programme should be viewed as a bridge between the 2021 Get Into Summer offer and future holiday provision, as part of a year round school age childcare offer. It should retain what worked well last year while beginning to embed new practices to test the changes required to aid development of a year-round system of School Age Childcare and meals provision. As such, we have taken information from the evaluation of last year's programme to highlight both positive and negative areas for the different protected groups.

2.1 Age

The evaluation of the Get into Summer 2021 programme showed that the provision of a summer holiday childcare and activities programme had a generally positive impact on children and young people (and by extension their families. For example evidence shows that women by far have the biggest caring responsibility and this should have a positive impact for this protected characteristic). The positive impact on mental health and wellbeing was particularly highlighted.

"The fund recognised the 'holiday experience gap' where children and young people from lower socio-economic backgrounds are disadvantaged during the school holidays. Children from low income families are less likely to participate in organised out-of-school activities, more likely to experience 'unhealthy holidays' in terms of nutrition and physical health and to experience social isolation."^[6]

"Many positive outcomes from children's participation in activities are evident. The main benefits identified by parents in the survey results were; greater opportunities to play with other children, an increase in physical activity, more time spent outdoors and an improvement in how their child was feeling generally. Food provision was also an important element, particularly for low income families".^[7]

Over half of parents (55%) said that summer activities enabled their child to be able to try out new activities and over two in five (43%) said that it had helped their child to feel more ready for school. While children enjoying eating food as part of activities was the least commonly reported benefit, around one in five (21%) parents still reported this as a benefit of their child attending activities.^[8]

2.2 Disability

The evaluation highlighted that disabled children and young people and those with ASN are often overlooked when it comes to summer holiday provision and welcomed the opportunities in the 2021 programme and wanted more to follow in future years. However, it is clear that a lack of staff with the necessary skills and training poses a risk to this. Disability and ASN was reported as a barrier for some of the participants in 2021.^[9] For 3% of respondents to the parents omnibus their or their child's physical or mental health or disability preventing them from participating, was one of the main reasons their child did not take part.

"Parents of children and young people with ASN interviewed for this study contrasted the activities they had participated in this summer with what they felt was a general dearth of suitable holiday and out of school activities for their children, particularly when they hit teenage years… There was a very strong appetite for more investment in similar provision in the future, particularly given a perception that young people with ASN were not generally well catered for in terms of out-of-school and holiday provision".^[10]

"For families with a disabled child or a child with ASN, barriers were reported in making activities fully inclusive, particularly around a lack of availability of skilled staff to support children".^[11]

2.3 Gender Reassignment

No data.

2.4 Pregnancy and Maternity

No data.

2.5 Race

The evaluation of Get into Summer highlighted – anecdotally – low participation among children and young people from minority ethnic families in the 2021 summer programme. The Evaluation notes that: "monitoring reports and interviews indicated some concern among local authorities and national partners that they had not engaged as many minority ethnic families as they hoped"^[12]. However, the report then goes on to say that: "there was relatively little discussion of the barriers that might prevent minority ethnic families engaging with holiday activities".^[13]

Having said this, there were also examples of local authorities specifically working with partner organisations which had experience in engaging families from minority ethnic groups. "Examples included refugee resettlement schemes, schools with high populations from minority ethnic backgrounds, a multi-cultural family centre, and organisations working with Gypsy/Traveller families or young people."^[14]

There was also feedback from participants: "Families appreciated the variety of food provided, noting that offering a range of cuisines helped ensure activities were inclusive of people from different cultural backgrounds".^[15]

It is clear that useful and inclusive work did take place as part of the Get into Summer programme, but equally that more needs to be done this year to identify specific barriers to participation and whether these differ across the country. For this year's programme, the guidance document makes a number of recommendations about actions which local authorities and partner organisations can take to increase the reach of services and encourage greater participation from minority ethnic families. In developing the guidance, representatives from a range of organisations, including groups who work with minority ethnic children and families, were invited to be part of the guidance sub group. This was to ensure that they were able to share their experiences and those of the families they work with, and use this to inform the development of the guidance. They were able to show what sort of approaches would be most appropriate to engage minority ethnic families, as well as things to avoid. This advice directly informed the actions in the guidance, which specifies things such as:

"…ensuring language used in communications is inclusive; forging relationships with trusted community/faith leadersto promote maximum engagement, reach, and uptake amongst eligible groups; engaging trusted referral partners such as schools and relevant professionals to identify eligible children and families and communicate the offer to them;"^[16]

"Communication and promotion of the summer offer should be coordinated locally in order to maximise engagement among target groups. The Scottish Government is committed to inclusive, non-stigmatising communication - language, cultural differences and levels of digital literacy should all be considered."^[17]

"Principles of dignity and human rights should be applied, promoting non-stigmatising provision of services, and supporting inclusive service delivery, for example through cultural or linguistic inclusivity. Local authorities should be responsive to the particular needs of their communities, for instance by offering sessions in Gaelic medium or other widely-spoken minority languages as well as English where appropriate."^[18]

We must also ensure that good practice is shared between local authorities and partner organisations so that communities across the country can benefit. We have already facilitated a number of workshops for local authorities and service providers to enable them to learn from colleagues running successful programmes in 2021, and from a range of topic experts. These workshops included advice on reaching and engaging minority ethnic children and families. We will continue to encourage peer support and share good practice, as well as taking on board evidence from the programme evaluation.

2.6 Religion or Belief

No data.

2.7 Sex

Although not highlighted in the evaluation, it is worth noting that the burden of childcare falls disproportionately onto women rather than men, with the associated impact on women's capacity to take up work, education or training. This was noted in the Scottish Government's gender pay gap action plan^[19] published in 2019, which states: "A major cause of the gender pay gap is the availability of affordable and flexible childcare provision. Without it, women with children either; leave the workforce; work part time or work in inflexible employment which under-utilises their skills and pays less."^[20]

A report by the Office of National Statistics, also published in 2019^[21], found that in the UK "Over half of mothers (56.2%) said they had made a change to their employment for childcare reasons, compared with 22.4% of fathers." In addition "mothers were most likely to say they "reduced working hours" because of childcare, with around 3 in 10 mothers (28.5%) selecting this."^[22] Putting in place a system of out of school care is expected to have a positive impact on this, potentially enabling women to take on more hours or take on roles which had previously been out of reach. Related to this is the fact that the vast majority of childcare roles are undertaken by women, by extending these throughout the year this has the potential to offer greater job security and better pay.

2.8 Sexual Orientation

No data