Creating partnerships with organisations who will donate items or funds to Bexley’s HAF Programme has been a challenge.  A variety of companies and organisations have been contacted, but due to the demand they’ve received, they have not been able to support us.

Launching a new centralised booking system was challenging, especially before the Summer holidays in 2023.  We had to become familiar with the system ourselves quickly and getting the schools on board during a busy term was difficult.  The other challenge was getting the providers to set their programmes up and in the correct format.

Each holiday period since has become easier, with us only needing to support new staff in schools and new providers.  However, parents not being familiar with the system has affected bookings, particularly those who hadn’t got access to technology or didn’t speak English too well.

Despite these challenges, the number of places not attended decreased from Winter to Easter by 28%, and attendance of primary children increased from 69% last Summer to 76% in the Winter. Parents were able to get support from schools or providers to book onto their chosen provision.

The Winter holiday programme continues to be difficult, particularly with how the Christmas holiday period fell around the Christmas bank holidays.  This made it a challenge both for attendees and providers, partly due to the education make up in Bexley (academisation).  Given the choice, we would prefer this programme to be run outside of the Christmas holidays, as we believe this would maximise take up and meet our demand.

The increase in confidence in the booking system, building stronger relationships with schools, and increasing the marketing has had a positive impact on our attendance.  More parents know about the programme and know the providers.  However, we have noticed that many parents have preferred clubs they attend regularly and will sit on waiting lists for these providers instead of booking with an alternative organisation.  This means that some vouchers are redeemed but not used.

We are continually looking to try and improve the attendance of the secondary age group.  Feedback after last summer indicated that young people wanted to attend clubs that did not have younger children attending, or clubs where the older children were doing activities separately to younger children. We listened to this feedback and relayed it to our providers, who worked hard to create programmes more tailored for them.