Holiday schemes can change children's lives, believes Sam Goodchild, an extended services cluster manager for Medway Council.
She heads up one of Medway's three clusters and is overseeing a trial of new-style holiday provision. Medway is using extended services cash and the Sure Start childcare grant to help fund holiday provision.
Last year, the council ran holiday schemes for working parents with disabled children and funded other provision for working parents.
Take-up of the mainstream provision was low and the authority has used feedback to shape this year's pilot.
One key finding was that parents didn't necessarily want day-long childcare, says Goodchild. "They wanted activities that children could dip in and out of rather than dropping them off at 8am and picking them up at 6pm," she says.
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