The research undertaken and reported in this thesis was part funded by the Meals & More charity. The Meals & More initiative was established in 2015 by the catering industry supply company Brakes as part of its Corporate Social and Environmental Responsibility Strategy. Meals & More was awarded charitable status and was
registered with the Charity Commission in July 2018. The charitable objectives of Meals & More are to relieve poverty and hardship among children and their carers in the UK by providing grant aid to organisations (delivery partners) that provide disadvantaged children with access to nutritious meals and enrichment activities during school holiday periods (Charity Commission, 2019). Delivery partners include charitable and
community organisations, housing associations and local authorities that coordinate, design and deliver holiday club provision for disadvantaged children. At its inception in 2015, one delivery partner was supported, and four clubs received grant aid, 180
children were supported and 1,800 meals were provided. In 2016, the number of delivery partners had increased to eight and 42 clubs were supported, who supplied 9,000 meals. By 2017, 10 delivery partner organisations were being supported, 64 clubs
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received a grant and 38,000 meals were supplied. Supported clubs are located across the UK, and the diversity of delivery partners means that several different holiday club delivery models are supported. For example, one delivery partner, a charity, works in children’s centres and the funding through Meals & More enables them to work with families throughout the summer. However, because the families this charity works with are vulnerable, holiday provision is limited to twice a week as to hold it more often would be too onerous for families to attend. Another delivery partner provides food and activities in church halls and another does the same in community settings (Brakes, 2018).
Funding for Meals & More is provided in cash from Brakes who supported the charity by investing £125,000 which was used to fund all activities in the first year of operation. A further £100,000 was invested in 2016, increasing to £220,000 in 2017. Brakes also supports the charity in kind by meeting the cost of a full-time programme manager to administer the funding programme and by enabling staff members to raise funds through corporate fund-raising events and smaller scale individual fundraising activities as well as volunteering at clubs. Businesses that are part of Brakes supplier network are invited to become Supplier Supporters and commit up to £10,000 in cash over a three-year period to Meals & More which is then distributed to delivery partners and holiday clubs as grant aid, with a small percentage (5%) retained to support research through this PhD. Five supplier supporters agreed to support Meals & More, increasing to eight in 2016, the second year of operation and to 28 by 2018. Supplier supporters are also encouraged to link with holiday clubs and provide additional support in kind. Examples of in kind support includes helping clubs set up kitchens, supplying food directly to clubs, providing cookery demonstrations and school uniform and winter clothing appeals (Hulusi, 2017).
The short term objective of the Meals & More Charity was to increase the number of holiday clubs it supported. In the medium term, the charity will seek to consolidate and stabilise the network of holiday clubs and learn from the experience of supporting clubs through the network of delivery partners. In the longer term, it is hoped that holiday club
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provision will be enhanced and that more supplier supporters will be recruited so more delivery partners can be supported and the breadth and depth of holiday provision will be improved. Clubs will be encouraged to provide a minimum of one hour of physical activity per session for child attendees as well as provide opportunities for children and parents or carers to learn new skills such as cooking and nutritional knowledge.
Ultimately, it is hoped that holiday provision may have an effect in reducing the gap in educational attainment between high and low SES children and provide opportunities for parents and carers to gain skills that may lead to employment. Furthermore, by expanding the provision of holiday clubs, it is hoped that they may also provide affordable, accessible child care for parents who work.
1.2. Conclusion
The literature reviewed in this chapter indicates that childhood poverty in the UK is increasing. The household incomes of families, particularly single parent families who rely on benefits, have been frozen at 2016 rates, and their income is set to decrease as further welfare benefit reforms are implemented. Frequently, hard choices have to be made by low income families about everyday necessities, including food and
participation in everyday society, increasing their risk of social isolation. These issues are faced year-round for low income families, but pressure on already tight budgets increases during the summer holidays when the safety net of free school meals is removed, placing children at risk of holiday hunger and food insecurity (Forsey, 2017). Food shopping bills increase, and parents buy cheap, energy dense, nutrient poor food rather than food that fortifies (Gill & Sharma, 2004). Parents may also adopt tactics used by food insecure households to make food last during the summer holidays, including skipping meals themselves to make sure that their children have food (Defeyter, Graham, & Prince, 2015; Harvey, 2016). Research shows that experiencing repeated episodes of food insecurity negatively impacts on children’s academic attainment (Johnson & Markowitz, 2018; Jyoti, Frongillo, & Jones, 2005). Furthermore, a
consequence of higher shopping bills during the summer means that money is restricted and children from low income families are prevented from participating in stimulating and engaging activities with friends, potentially resulting in lonely, sedentary summers
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(Campbell, Watson, & Watters, 2015; Gill & Sharma, 2004; Kellogg’s, 2015; Morgan et al., 2019). Research also suggests that organisations have responded to concerns
regarding the pressures low income families face during the summer holidays by developing and delivering holiday club provision for disadvantaged children (Mann & Defeyter, 2017; Mann et al., 2018). Research has indicated that the clubs are likely to be located in areas of high deprivation and that families who attend holiday clubs are highly likely to be food insecure either with or without hunger, but provide children with access to a meal in lieu of the midday meal at school and enables them to engage in enriching activities (Long et al., 2017; Mann & Defeyter, 2017). However, holiday club provision is unregulated and several models of holiday provision have developed (Mann et al., 2018) and, although prior qualitative research has investigated the benefits of holiday club provision, very little is known about the factors that have led to the
development and delivery of holiday clubs for disadvantaged children in the UK. It was therefore considered that there was a need for further qualitative research with a range of stakeholders to investigate this matter. Study 1 presented in Chapter 3 of this thesis therefore investigates the factors that have influenced the development and delivery of holiday clubs in the UK. It also investigates the potential benefits, uses and impact of holiday club provision with food and enrichment activities on the health, educational and social well-being of child holiday club attendees and their parents and carers. Furthermore, whilst providing access to food is a central theme that has led to the development of holiday clubs, very little is known about what children consume at holiday club. With the exception of summer holiday projects to be funded in summer 2019 through a £9.1m fund established by the Department for Education in England, there are no statutory requirements regarding the type of food to be served at holiday clubs. The findings of Study 2 presented in Chapter 4 of this thesis therefore
investigated the effect of holiday club attendance on the type and energy and
macronutrient content of food children consumed on a day they attended holiday club and a day they did not attend holiday club. Children’s food intake on a non-holiday club attendance day and a holiday club attendance day was also compared with
recommended levels of intake for children for the lunch time meal. Data on children’s food intake, covering a 24-hour period when not at holiday club were also collected to
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investigate whether children met recommended dietary guidelines for the consumption of fruit and vegetables and water. A further aim of holiday club provision is to enable children to participate in enriching and stimulating activities, and, it has been speculated that children may continue to learn whilst at holiday club, though the relaxed informal atmosphere may mean that children do not realise they are learning (Graham et al., 2016). Furthermore, it has also been speculated that attendance at holiday club may provide opportunities to help reduce the gap in attainment between high and low-income children. However, whilst research suggests that the long summer holidays in the USA may contribute to the gap in attainment between children from different socio-economic backgrounds, often referred to as summer learning loss, it is not known if learning loss occurs in children in the UK, nor whether attendance at holiday clubs in the UK will have any effect on children’s skills and knowledge in key domains. Study 3, presented in Chapter 5 of this thesis therefore investigated whether summer learning loss occurs in the UK with regard to spelling, word reading and maths computation and further
investigated the effect of holiday club attendance on children’s performance in these domains.
The current research programme of work therefore seeks to make a unique contribution to the research literature in a number of ways. Firstly, it investigated what factors influenced the development and delivery of holiday clubs in the UK. It also investigated the effect of holiday club attendance on children’s nutritional intake. It investigated whether summer learning loss occurs in the UK where the summer holiday period is typically six or seven weeks long and the effect of holiday club attendance on children’s skills and knowledge in key domains of spelling, word reading and maths computation and in so doing, sought to address the shortcomings of prior work which have
CHAPTER 2: Methodology 2.1. Introduction
This chapter outlines the theoretical framework, methodological approach and methods used to investigate holiday club provision in the UK with regard to health, educational and social well-being outcomes of child attendees and their parents/carers. The chapter begins with an exploration of the pragmatist paradigm and indicates how this approach influenced the design of the studies within this thesis. The chapter then examines the mixed methods sequential design and the qualitative and quantitative methods used to collect and analyse data for this thesis and concludes by addressing the ethical
considerations of the research undertaken.
2.2. Pragmatism
Pragmatism as a paradigm within social science research has emerged as a way of investigating real world phenomena in a way that is not bound to one epistemological stance, but instead values both quantitative and qualitative methods and calls for their convergence in the investigation of multi-layered, ever changing real world phenomena (Feilzer, 2010). Pragmatism therefore orientates itself towards solving practical
problems in the real world rather than forcing the researcher to choose between paradigms by integrating or combining the paradigms (Creswell, Klassen, Plano, & Smith, 2011; Feilzer, 2010). In this regard, mixed methods research has therefore emerged as a “third way” of conducting research that is based on making pragmatic choices in developing research designs that provide answers to research questions that would not be achieved by adopting one method alone, and therefore providing a more detailed understanding of social phenomena (Armitage, 2007).