Understanding the implementation of the holiday activities and food programme in the North East of England using normalization process theory.

Following several pilot projects, in 2020, the Department for Education (DfE) in England committed funding of £220M p. a to its Holiday Activities and Food (HAF) programme to support all 153 upper-tier local authorities, comprising City Councils, County Councils and Metropolitan Borough Councils, to provide an activity and food programme for children who are in receipt of means-tested free school meals. In this study, qualitative interviews were conducted with representatives from three Local Authorities in the North East of England who were responsible for overseeing the implementation and delivery of HAF programmes in their Local Authority area to examine how the summer HAF programme was implemented during summer 2021.