South Lanarkshire’s Youth, families and community learning development team continued to support the community by giving learning opportunities for the children and young people targeting families who had little or no digital access and printing facilities.

How to use this exemplar

South Lanarkshire’s Youth, Families and Communities CLD Team organised learning opportunities for the children and young people targeting families who had little or no digital access and/or printing facilities.

Improvement questions

• How do I identify the needs of children, young people and their families in the current circumstances?
• How am I helping children and young people to continue to engage in learning and wider opportunities?
• What support and information can I signpost children, young people and families to?
• How might the support and provision for children, young people and families need to be adapted or done differently during Covid-19?
• How can I raise awareness of the needs of children, young people and families during this time and ensure that their needs and voices are heard in recovery planning?
• How am I measuring the impact of new approaches and services and evolving these to suit the needs of children, young people and their families?

Explore this exemplar

Across South Lanarkshire, Youth, Family and Community Learning Teams have been busy creating activity packs to support children, families and young people of all ages, including ASN, during the period of lockdown. These packs are designed to engage with new learners and to maintain well established relationships with our communities. They can help alleviate boredom and improve the mental health of young people by giving them activities that they can carry out on their own and with their families.

The packs are bespoke, learner centred, and are prioritised for young people and families who have limited access to technology or printing facilities. Packs are delivered directly to the homes of young people and families. This allows invaluable face-to-face contact (from a 2m distance) with the community and the opportunity for staff to offer support if required.

The activity packs have a diverse content and include resources to enable young people and families to carry out the activities. Themes for packs have included: Health and Wellbeing; STEM; Family Learning; Cooking on a Budget; Music activity; Baking; Gardening and many other fun and educational activities for people of all ages.

Sample Pack: After School Busy Bag

The After-School Club Busy Bag was developed as a way of engaging remotely with the vulnerable families and young people who would normally access the clubs each week within Glenlee Primary and Loch Primary. The bags are made up weekly by CLD staff and delivered to young people on their doorstep.

The Busy Bags began as large activity packs which included colouring-in sheets, pens, paper and skipping ropes, and have been followed by weekly themed top-ups. These top-ups have included “Make your own Crispy-cakes” and “Grow your own Sunflower” kits. All of the resources and ingredients required to complete the activities are contained within each pack, to ensure there is no additional cost to families.

Three of the After-School Club volunteers have also been a fantastic help developing and researching resources for our packs. One of the volunteers has piloted her first Busy Bag unboxing video this week. This has allowed her to engage remotely with the After-School Club young people and has also given her tasks to complete whilst she is self-isolating due to her being a young carer.

Sample Pack 2: Family Activity Pack

Cambuslang UC CLD have been maintaining links with the families they work with on their family learning programme through the delivery of over 60 Family Learning Packs to these families during the lockdown period.

The packs contain a range of fun activities for families to complete together and links directly to a weekly family craft activity that is uploaded to Facebook. The resources for undertaking this activity are contained in the pack.

Parents have indicated that using the packs has been fun, has allowed families to do things together, has reduced boredom and that they have enjoyed participating on the linked the activities on Cambuslang UC Facebook.

Impact

Quotes from learners:

“My son is really enjoying the Busy Bags, it’s keeping him off the ipad and Playstation and it’s giving us time to sit together. There is a wide variety of activities for him to pick and instead of playing Fortnite on the computer, he loved filling out the Fortnite word search and activity sheets” Mum of P5 St Cuthbert’s pupil

“Due to the Busy Bags, my daughter now has something to look forward to each week, she looks out for staff arriving every Thursday. Thank you so much” Mum of Loch Primary pupil

“ I loved making the crispy cakes, please can we have more baking busy bags it’s so much fun!” P5 Glenlee Primary pupil

“The packs are excellent, a good time filler and a good mixture for the different age groups. We are enjoying doing the activities together as a family, my daughter really liked the Covid 19 time capsule booklet.”

“The packs are amazing. I feel very happy watching my son enjoy using the pack. I also enjoyed getting involved in the rainbow scavenger hunt.”

“Thank you for the great packs we have received, loved the video”

“They were great, fantastic! The kids enjoyed doing the activities, particularly the dot to dot and the colouring. There was a good variety for different ages.”

“The activity packs are fun and very good. They provide something different for the children to do other than school work. They are still learning and the variety of activities holds their interest longer. This gives us as parents a much needed time to relax and do other things. My child likes the dot to dots and colour by number using addition as this helps her number work.”