HAF Annual Report 2025/26

The types of organisations delivering HAF in Buckinghamshire vary greatly (Appendix 1). All HAF clubs include:

• a healthy meal, which meets school food standards, for each HAF attendee at every session. Meals are usually accompanied by a healthy dessert. Healthy snacks are also provided at sessions.
• informal nutritional learning. This improves participants’ knowledge and awareness of healthy lifestyles. For example, taste tests, assisting in food preparation or cooking meals, themed games, quizzes and more.
• at least an hour of physical activity. This could be through structured sporting opportunities, for example, football or rugby. It can also be experienced through more low-intensity activities. For example, such as nature walks and yoga.
• an enriching activity that develops cultural capital or enables a child or young person to learn a new skill. This could include arts and crafts, theatre and arts, trips and more.
• appropriate signposting to local support services for families of attending CYP. For each delivery period, a signposting postcard is created and sent to HAF providers to hand out to families attending. This contains links to support services and other free activity opportunities in a discreet fashion.

Buckinghamshire’s mainstream HAF clubs offer a range of enriching activities. These give the children and young people a chance to:

• develop new skills
• make new friends
• become more physically active
• create new memories

Activities on offer include:

• street dance,
• drama,
• cooking,
• coding,
• sports,
• outdoor adventure activities,
• and much more.

Some HAF providers also offered trips as part of their provision. These included:

• football stadium tours
• museum visits
• cinema trips
• escape rooms
• pantomimes
• visits to local farms and zoos
• community stream cleaning activities

Each trip provided unique experiences. These trips helped children and young people build their cultural capital.

Buckinghamshire's specialist SEND HAF clubs ensure that children and young people with special educational needs and/or disabilities who have more complex requirements can fully benefit from holiday activities.

Our mainstream HAF clubs are equally committed to supporting children and young people with SEND. Where possible, they are expected to make reasonable adjustments to their provision. This is so that those with additional needs can take part in the activities on offer.

Across the 4 delivery years from 2022/23 to 2025/26 the number of SEND places on offer to eligible children and young people has grown by 134%. 1,218 places were offered in 2022/23 compared to 2,844 in 2025/26.

This is a result of work conducted in collaboration with several local organisations. This work aimed to:

• encourage and enable providers to grow their existing SEND offers,
• explore new opportunities to develop new offers for eligible children and young people with SEND.

In addition, the number of locations offering these places has increased from 14 in 2022/23 to 17 in 2025/26. This creates wider geographical coverage locally, with 1,123 individual children and young people with SEND accessing the programme this year. This makes up 30% of the total cohort.

The HAF programme has also continued working with Thomley (A SEND provider) to offer overnight camping stays for families of children and young people with SEND across 2025. 32 eligible families enjoyed stays in specially adapted camping pods. They enjoyed activities during the day and a family BBQ in the evening before staying the night and eating a healthy breakfast together. Alongside their overnight camping stays, this Christmas Thomley also offered a ‘Breakfast with Santa’ event that was very well received.