The review said: “Much of the evidence on the effects of holiday hunger and holiday learning loss and on effective provision to address these issues has been drawn from the international literature, especially evidence from the USA.
“Only a few UK providers of holiday activities with food had sufficient records to draw any substantive conclusions about best practice or value for money in holiday food and activity delivery. The most informative evidence came from those which had been formally evaluated.
“While learning from international (especially US) evidence, the review reveals a number of evidence gaps in the UK and a lack of evaluation of current provision to address both holiday hunger and holiday learning loss.”
On the specific issue of holiday hunger it adds: “The UK does not undertake official measurements of food insecurity (Taylor & Loopstra, 2016), unlike many other developed countries, so although some authors have attempted to arrive at a speculative number of children who might be affected, for example Forsey (2017) who suggests three million, the actual number is unknown.
“International evidence on food insecurity indicates that persistent or repeated episodes of hunger have a negative effect on children’s physical, mental and emotional wellbeing and impact adversely on attainment and achievement at school.”
It draws on studies in the US into holiday activity and food provision to find that involving parents and carers ‘can encourage participation’ and also provides opportunities to share information about nutrition. It suggests that family cooking activities improve understanding of how to make the best of low cost ingredients and ‘can be fun’.
An important lesson from the Derbyshire bchool holiday food programme in the UK was the term ‘holiday hunger’ should be avoided as negative and stigmatising.
It also found that neutral settings such as parks and community centres improved participation over schools and churches, and pointed to evidence that the term ‘club’ was off-putting for young people.
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