Cash redirected for Easter holiday activities

Council funds have been redirected to provide activities to children and young people from low-income families during the Easter holidays in Renfrewshire.

A small amount of money has been used to deliver free camps during the break – including the offer of a hot meal – for those between the age of five and 14 years old.

Information and booking for the programme have been shared with key third sector organisations, as well as on a referral basis from social work, to ensure“effective targeting of places”to those most in need.

Laura McIntyre, the council’s head of policy and partnerships, told the Fairer Renfrewshire sub-committee: “Members will be aware of the success, I think, of the summer programme last year and the work that was undertaken to try to target activities as much as we could over that summer period to support low-income families in households across Renfrewshire.

“We have managed to identify a small amount of residual funding from some of the small pots of funding that we had around those programmes to be able to deliver a programme over the Easter school holidays.

“We’ve been trying again to provide an opportunity to target access to those opportunities at Easter to low-income households and working with colleagues across different services in the council.

“That’s a really positive development over the last couple of weeks that we’ve been able to identify that funding and move quickly to put that into place.”

A report to the sub-committee explained:“Due to underspend identified within the service, funding has been identified and allocated to provide a focussed programme of holiday activities for children and young people throughout the Easter break. Camps will be provided across six locations by community learning and development and Street Stuff for children and young people aged five to 14.

“The camps are free and a hot meal is provided at lunch time.

“Information and booking for the camps have been shared with key third sector organisations and also on a referral basis from social work in order to ensure effective targeting of places to children that need it most.”