HAF Provider Resource: Your Weekly Guide to Easter & Summer Success

Get organised and stay on track with our simplified HAF calendar! This printable resource covers both Easter and Summer holidays, providing a week-by-week plan to guide you through. Download your copy start planning your successful HAF delivery.

The application process for HAF providers is designed to ensure you select the best organisations to deliver high-quality programs for children:

1. Review your Guidelines: Familiarise yourself with the eligibility criteria, program requirements, and funding guidelines to see if you need to update them.
2. Decide where in your application process you include safeguarding, SEND and DEI provision.
3. Establish how you're going to assess monitor food health and safety.
4. Decide what stages you'll need to process all applications to get to a decision.
5. If you want a blended mix of different activity types be clear how you'll assess each category to ensure you meet your goals and safety standards.
6. Design your application form and consider some elements of 'friction' so that only serious providers apply.

Note: The safeguarding, SEND and DEI elements can all be split across the process. Eg. They provide their company safeguarding policies and process for stage 1 and then proof of their staff background checks for your final stage.

Thorough vetting is crucial for selecting reliable HAF providers.

You will need to check their safeguarding practices, health and safety protocols. food hygiene, SEND care provision, risk assessments and so on.

Prioritising each and taking time to find solutions to simplify this process will help make this process more efficient on the long run.

The safety and well-being of children are paramount. HAF providers need to ensure their activity provider adhere to strict safeguarding practices.

Check out or downloadable HAF safeguarding checklist to see the core elements to safeguarding.

We help prioritise the safety and well-being of children by facilitating comprehensive background checks including ID, DBS, verifying references, and ensuring compliance with relevant standards.

Any provider that uses us you can be assured they've done the correct checks and recorded them compliantly.

Crucially for your admin purposes, they can share these directly with you and their organisations safeguarding documents on our platform, which you can log in and see in real-time.

Food safety is paramount in HAF provision. Providers must adhere to strict regulations and standards to ensure the well-being of children. This includes:

Hygiene and Food Handling: Proper handwashing, food storage, and preparation techniques are essential to prevent contamination.

Our platform enables them to share their certificates, quality standards and staff qualifications as part of their profile.

It's crucial to provide a welcoming and supportive environment for children with SEND. This means organisations need to understanding their individual needs and tailoring activities accordingly.

Ensure as part of your application process your Local Authority SEND team help you review their suitability.

Many Activity Providers would welcome additional support to help improve their SEND provision so you could offer that through the application process.

Once the applications are received, meticulously review each application, ensuring all necessary checks are conducted as outlined above.

Creating a scoring system for each category you decide upon will help you determine your final list. For example, it could be as simple as 7 categories with a scoring of 1-5 on each.

Communicating to the successful applications is a great opportunity to outline next steps and any onboard activity they need to complete.

We're here to support you every step of the way. Once applications are approved, we guide the providers through our onboarding process. This includes:

Training: We offer comprehensive training sessions to equip them with the knowledge and skills needed to use our system.

Of course this includes your team so they can quickly and efficiently review all your providers and spot any gaps in their submissions.

Stay coordinated and maintain focus with our easy-to-use HAF calendar! This downloadable tool includes both Easter and Summer breaks, offering a week-by-week schedule to assist you. Grab your version now and begin strategising your effective HAF implementation.