An app co-created with young people in Gateshead helped deliver a successful new programme to encourage teenagers take part in school holiday activities, and make sure they get a healthy meal.
Gateshead Council was chosen to pilot a Holiday Activities and Food (HAF) Programme specifically developed for 13 to 16 years olds – known as HAF Plus. After consulting with young people to find out the best way to encourage them to participate, a group of teenagers worked with Newcastle based software house Nebula Labs to develop their own HAF Plus app.
After successfully piloting the scheme and the app this summer, the young people are now involved in helping develop the app further with new features that will be ready for future holidays.
The HAF programme, delivered by councils across England, provides children and young people in receipt of benefits-related free school meals with opportunities to get involved in a range of holiday activities where they also get a healthy meal.
Researchers at Northumbria University developed HAF Plus after evaluating the HAF programme and realising that teenagers were not engaging in the same numbers as in the under 11s programme. Northumbria University also delivered a schedule of activities for HAF Plus in the summer including climbing, dodgeball, gym sessions, wellbeing and mindfulness.
Gateshead Council HAF team set up a HAF Plus Hub with the help of local shopping mall, Metrocentre in their Community space. Just under 200 teenagers took part in activities that included sports, cookery, entrepreneurship skills, and art sessions. The young people were also provided with a free healthy meal and drink. The programme was supported in Gateshead by Greggs, NUFC, Gateshead College, Go North East, Grounded Kitchen, Protégé and Baltic Arts and many other organisations.
Gwen Young, HAF Programme Support Officer, from Gateshead Council said, “This has been a fantastic collaboration between all the partners involved and the young people themselves. In 2023 we ran a trial of the programme the young people had designed and we knew we needed an app to offer it to all the young people in Gateshead in need.
“Northumbria University set us off on this exciting journey for which we are super grateful. We have worked hard to provide a comprehensive offer this summer, and the app really was pivotal – developed with the young people to be something they would use, and like using – and it’s proven to be successful in helping us engage young people with the programme.
“HAF Plus is so important in terms of our anti-poverty and equality strategy, we need to make sure that young people are able to access enjoyable, free activities as well as benefitting from a nutritious and accessible meal.
“We are looking forward to now developing HAF Plus and the app into something even bigger and better for next year’s holidays to reach even more young people across the borough.”
Professor Greta Defeyter, Director of the Healthy Living Lab at Northumbria University, led the co-development of the new HAF Plus programme. She said: “If we want to help young people reach their potential and reduce anti-social behaviour – which is really important because youth services across the UK have been decimated in the last decade – we need to provide them with opportunities that will narrow the educational attainment gap and increase social mobility, so we need a programmes like HAF Plus operating in local authorities across England.”
Nebula Labs CEO Dylan McKee said, “We have a great passion for using Tech for Good, and this was a really exciting project to involve young people in developing something that was just for them – by co-creating the app, rather than make assumptions, it is something that we know they genuinely want, like and will use. We are looking forward to further developing it with them and Gateshead Council, who have been really forward looking with their decision to use digital innovation to engage with young people in this way.”
