Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what support and activities will be available to vulnerable children during the summer holidays in 2020.

The summer period is a time of increased risk and vulnerability for many children and young people, which is why across government we have looked to strengthen our existing provisions to meet vulnerable young people’s needs over the summer period.

The Holiday Activities and Food programme, backed by £9 million of investment, will provide free healthy meals and enriching activities to thousands of disadvantaged children throughout the summer of 2020, building on the success of the 2018 and 2019 programmes.

As well as the Holiday Activities and Food programme, we are providing food vouchers for disadvantaged children through the COVID Summer Food Fund. Due to the unprecedented nature of the COVID-19 outbreak, we recognise families will face increased pressure on household budgets over the coming months. This fund will enable children who are eligible for benefits-related free school meals to be supported over the summer holiday period. During the COVID-19 outbreak, we have also temporarily extended the free school meals eligibility to include some groups who have no recourse to public funds.

Alongside this support, we also have a comprehensive set of services that will continue to support young people over the summer months. The National Citizen Service (NCS) will provide a new support offer for 16 to 17 year olds. Further education colleges and schools will be offered a menu of NCS activities over 2-10 days, which can be tailored to support any summer or autumn activities that the college or other provider are running as part of their post COVID-19 re-engagement or induction phases with students. This support will be free to further education colleges and schools and delivered in late summer and throughout autumn.

We have also distributed funding to strengthen key frontline services, including £34.15 million to support vulnerable children’s charities. This funding has been used to provide online counselling, therapy and face to face support for vulnerable children through a coalition of charities led by Barnardo’s, as well as funding to expand helplines and provide ongoing support to particularly vulnerable groups.

A range of other support for vulnerable children will continue over the summer holidays including maintaining contact with families through the Ministry of Communities, Housing and Local Government’s Troubled Families programme, as well as the Home Office’s Violence Reduction Units that will continue to bring together multi-agency partners to tackle violent crime and provide summer provision.

The government is also providing £1 billion of catch-up funding to directly tackle the impact of lost teaching time over the 2020-21 academic year. This includes £650 million to be shared across state primary and secondary schools, which can be used to support pupils through summer school provision.