Engage Renfrewshire was contacted by STV Children’s Appeal with the offer of £2000 to spend on a family fun event. This event would be free to those families living within easy reach of a specific centre. The content and arrangements were totally up to us at Engage. The only stipulation was that it involved families in Renfrewshire having a fun time. This would not have any follow-up, and should last a couple of hours, with STV coming along at some point juts see how the events were going. They also asked for any social media coverage to be posted on their #site.

Thursday 9th June 2016 6.30pm to 8.30pmJohnstone Castle Community Centre

Thursday 16th June 2016 6.30pm to 8.30pmThe Tannahill Centre, Paisley

Thoseorganisations we contacted to come along to both events and provide their services were:-

Volunteers from Our Place Our Families provided the face-painting

A former volunteer from Our Place Our Families made balloon sculpters/models

Jumpsoftplay who provided ball pool and soft indoor play equipment

Active Communities who provided a smoothie bike, pizza making and large umbrella games. (Johnstone Castle only)

ChildCare First who provided arts & crafts and cake decorating.

Catering was provided by The Tannahill Café and Taste Bites

Renfrewshire Health & Social Care Partnership provided a variety of give-aways highlighting childhood health.

In Johnstone Castle Community Centre staff from Families First Johnstone came along to promote their services

Police Scotland who has a station in Ferguslie Park came along to the event in The Tannahill Centre.

Activities provider’s feed-back.

During both events we took some time to informally chat with the organisations providing the activities. Most of the providers, except Jumpsoftplayand Tasty Bites Catering, were from the Third Sector. In the main they were pleased to be asked along to the events. At Johnstone Castle, Families First appreciated the chance to promote and describe what services they bring to the Johnstone area. They mentioned that they had a few families confirming that they would get in touch to access some of the services. In the Tannahill Centre, Police Scotland also appreciated the opportunity to ‘get their faces known’ by local people. This type of event gives them that chance to show they are approachable.

Care-takers at both events also added that they had promoted the events to the people they knew in and around the centres. They were pleased to see the activities happening, especially as they were aimed at families with very young children, which was not the aim. However, the type of activities we arranged probably did appear to be for a certain age range. In their experiences most families do not usually come to such things, as they usually cost money, and in the main, prices and costs act as barriers to them coming along.

Feedback from attendees

As we were unsure how many people would come along as we had promoted both events as drop-in, we had to come up with a way to get people to very quickly provide some form of feed-back or comments on the events. We decided to ask them to leave comments on flip-chart paper as they were leaving.

In Johnstone Castle we asked “Did you like our event?”, and to leave their name under either a

or a

23 families put their names under the smiley face, while 1 family put their name under the frown. Their reason for this was they felt that too many ‘big’ children got into the soft play and “ruined it for the wee ones!”

For the Tannahill Centre we ask each family to write a comment on our flip-chart:-

“kids loved it!”

“Great night for the kids!”

“Really good, enjoyed myself!”

“Great fun for kids!£

“Too noisy!”

“Very Good fun, thanks!”

“Good time very tiring!”

“That was brilliant!”

Other points of consideration.

  • How to encourage more dads, as only around 3 attended at both events.
  • All activities were aimed at nursery & primary school children. Could we have considered something for older children?
  • Did we need to put up leaflets around food allergies?
  • We did have some ‘bumps’ with different aged children colliding, but no real accidents requiring first aid, which we did not have.
  • Worth considering setting up # address for people to put their comments?
  • Hot food being carried around hall
  • A selection of areas for parents to sit and observe. (In 1 hall we had parents known not to get on with each other moving chairs and tables so as to be apart)
  • Getting parents to sign in worked really well, as this gave us the chance to check that parents and children were together.
  • Using nursery staff for some of the activities as they promoted the events to ‘their’ parents.
  • Lucky with weather, as a good night meant parents came out of house.
  • Refreshments for stall holders
  • Signs/banners for each activity provider
  • Info on services available locally perhaps on an advert wall.
  • Youth team coming along to provide activities for older children
  • Quiet corner perhaps for story telling
  • Something for parents to get involved with.