Extratime Update: August 2022

Useful Links:
BHCC joint letter
Extratime Core Team Organisation Chart
Meet the Team (Who We Are)

If you are a parent carer, you will know the number of places Extratime was able to offer each child and young person this summer was far lower than it would normally be.

We are acutely aware of the impact this has on families, and we are grateful for your patience and understanding while we are working hard to return to our pre-pandemic capacity.

I have been asked by Brighton & Hove City Council (BHCC) to share with you the ‘joint communication’ produced in response to some of the concerns raised by the SEND community in recent months. It is specifically related to the challenges with holiday schemes this summer and plans for the future.

Alongside this I am also sharing below some more detailed information on the points in the letter. In particular, some of the positive steps we’ve made to increase places at future clubs and schemes to help improve the situation for families as we move into next year.

Recruitment

The letter refers to Extratime’s successful response to local and national staffing challenges.

Central to this has been reorganising, and recruiting additional skills and expertise into our small senior team.

This includes strengthening expertise within the team around SEND (complex needs, behaviour support, play), HR, fundraising and safeguarding. All of these changes are helping us increase places for children and young people as we move forward.

By creating a dedicated role for staff recruitment, we are better able to attract the right people, with the relevant skills, experience, and characteristics for the increasingly high SEND needs of children and young people.  We have already appointed seven new Play and Youth workers to ensure after school and youth clubs are fully staffed from 5^th September.

We are also building stronger relationships with recruitment partners, including universities and colleges to attract new people to join us ahead of the next holiday schemes.

Our newly created ‘SEND team’, Sophy, Jade and Ivan, will be familiar faces to many parent carers. They each have a wealth of experience and know the children and young people very well. These are now full time roles to ensure we are providing the highest quality support and care for each child and young person now and into the future.

Internally we are already seeing the impact of these changes and we expect you too will see them as we return to the consistent, reliable service you deserve and expect from Extratime.

Commissioning and funding

The letter refers to the current review and recommissioning of Extratime’s BHCC Short Breaks contract. The impact the team changes we have made on places is also dependent on this. We expect to know the outcome of the first stage of this process by mid-September so I will be able to share an update on this in the coming weeks.

In the meantime, I can explain more about how Extratime is funded generally.

As a charity it is important that we have don’t risk having all our ‘eggs in one basket’. For Extratime this means a mix of funding streams, including local authority contracts and grants, grants from charitable trusts, parent carer fees and rental income.

The chart below shows our estimated income for this year.

As the chart illustrates, about one third of our funding is from the BHCC Short Breaks contract. This pays for after school clubs, play schemes and youth holiday schemes in Brighton & Hove.

The clubs in West Sussex and the term-time youth clubs at Portslade Village Centre are all funded from other sources.

The BHCC Short Breaks contract does not cover the full cost of running the services it funds. This means we also raise money from other sources to create additional places at the clubs and schemes.

As the letter indicates, the council has committed to maintaining the current level of funding.

This means Extratime’s fundraising will also continue to fund after school club and holiday scheme places.

As Extratime costs are also continuing to increase, maintaining and increasing the offer will continue to be dependent on the success of our fundraising efforts.

As you’ll see in the chart above, grants account for over 40% of Extratime’s income, so strengthened the Fundraising team to maximise our income from charitable trusts and foundations is another of the important changes we have made to the senior team.

Venues

Over recent years, staffing challenges have been compounded by the extensive disruption caused by building and maintenance in the school buildings where schemes usually run.

We are very grateful to BHCC for the lovely site at Connaught Road this summer. This bright welcoming space was great.

It is also important to understand the work and costs involved each time we move into a new space, even temporarily, as the impact of this on the children and young people, and on Extratime’s limited resources cannot be overestimated.

Ofsted registration, risk assessments, including new fire safety procedures and equipment, staff induction and social stories to support children to adjust to the new space, is just some of the work involved. All of this is managed and paid for by our small Extratime team.

We are talking to council colleagues about this. We are also optimistic that COVID related delays to building work are ending and Extratime schemes will return to their usual homes next year.

Moving Forward

As you’ll see, Extratime’s capacity to support more children and young people with SEND needs is influenced by a complex set of factors, some of which I’ve tried to summarise here. Although it’s challenging, we are making good progress to get back to pre-pandemic levels.

We may not have much influence over government budgets and other structural issues, but it’s important to say that Extratime has tremendous support from many of our colleagues and partners at BHCC, WSCC, within the schools, and across the SEND community, especially PaCC and Amaze.

All of us are working hard in difficult circumstances to provide the best support we can for our amazing children and young people.

I will keep you updated as things develop over the coming weeks.

In the meantime, on behalf of everyone at Extratime, I want to thank parent carers again for your patience and support over recent months. We know how impossible the summer holidays can be without the break Extratime would usually give you, so your understanding means a lot to us all.

The children and young people are obviously at the heart of everything we do, and as always, they have been the stars this summer.

We’ve loved spending time with them all, and lots of the Play Workers were very sad that we’ve reached the end of the summer holiday schemes. We are already looking forward and planning for the next one.

As always please get in touch if you’d like to know more about any of the points addressed above, or in the BHCC letter.

Sam Price
Extratime CEO
[email protected]