Fact Sheets
Play
One of the five principles underpinning the Children ’s Plan
is that children and young people need to enjoy their
childhood as well as grow up prepared for adult life. Play –
what children and young people do when they follow their
own ideas and interests in their own way and for their own
reasons – is at the heart of this ambition. It is something that
children truly enjoy, and is essential for the development
of the skills that children and young people need as they
become adults and move on in education or into work.
Yet there is evidence that opportunities for play – particularly outdoor play – are falling. Concerns about safety (especially road traffic), the loss of open green space, the poor availability and quality of existing facilities, and the increasingly structured use of children’s spare time are all barriers to children engaging in more outdoor play. The needs of communities, and the families within these, are often not reflected in the design and location of public play areas. The cumulative impact of these factors is reflected in one of the main messages that children, young people, and their parents consistently feed back to Government – that there aren’t enough safe, stimulating places for them to go, and that tackling this is one of the most important things that Government can do to help families today.
The Children's Plan Commitment
The Children’s Plan announced a new agenda for the Department for Children, Schools and Families (in partnership with the Department for Culture Media and Sport) on supporting better and safer outdoor play spaces that children can access by themselves, free of charge, with a focus on 8-13 year olds. The total package of investment over the next three years is £225m – all of it on new commitments. This will fund 30 new adventure playgrounds, and up to 3,500 play areas nationally will be rebuilt or renewed and made accessible to children. These plans will be set out in the first national play strategy for England this summer. We will be announcing the first 15 pathfinder local authorities at the beginning of April, and the second wave of 15 pathfinders will be announced later in the year. In the first year of funding, 65 local authorities will either become play pathfinders or playbuilders, provided they submit a satisfactory proposal, to enable them to begin receiving funding. An offer of capital funding will be made by 2010/11 to every local authority in England to support the delivery of stimulating local places to play.
Context
Children today lead busy lives. They are engaged in a wide variety of activities, and there has been an increase in the level of structured, organised activities they take part in. Parents are increasingly prescribing how their children should be using their activity time, and this affects affluent children particularly. Children also have more sedentary options for their leisure time.
The vast majority of children say that they enjoy going outside to play, but the opportunities for outdoor play appear to be falling and the average age at which children are allowed outside unsupervised has risen. Research suggests that a significant minority of children aged 8-10 have never played outside without an adult.
We have already taken a number of steps to increase the opportunities for children to play. Significant investment has already been made in improving access to play through initiatives such as the BIG lottery £155 million Children’s Play initiative. This aims to create, improve and develop children and young people’s free local inclusive play spaces and opportunities throughout England.
The legal protection of school playing fields, introduced in 1998, has ensured that there are facilities for this and future generations. By opening facilities for longer hours, extended schools are maximising the use of playing fields and providing greater opportunities for children to take part in a wide range of activities before during and after the school day. Promoting further investment in outdoor play facilities on schools sites continues through schools.capital programmes such as Building chools for the Future.
Play is important in its own right. Outdoor, active play will be embedded in the Child Health and Wellbeing PSA Delivery Plan, and will help to tackle child obesity, and to support good social and emotional health. Play can also act as a gateway to structured, positive activities and support services for children and families who may be hard to reach through other routes.
The Government’s forthcoming Play Strategy will set out the play agenda in full. We will be consulting over the summer and will publish an action plan in the autumn. This will look at how we can help support play throughout childhood, with an emphasis on community empowerment. It will set out our actions to create more places to play, and details of how we will tackle the safety concerns of parents and children. It will cover how play can be given higher priority in local lanning and design thinking, and how a focus on play can be sustained and embedded in the medium to long term.
Questions
The Department is interested to hear your views on the questions below. If you would like to feed in your comments to this continuing dialogue, please email your responses, stating which fact sheet and which question you are answering, to timetotalk.feedback@dcsf.gsi.gov.uk.
On the perfect play area:
- What are the important factors that make play areas good and safe?
- What is the biggest gap in terms of locally available play facilities?
- Who should take a part in ensuring there are good safe play areas?
On supporting play:
- How can local areas and their strategic partners best support play throughout childhood – from 0-19?
- How can government best support local areas and their strategic partners to plan and deliver the appropriate mix of in-school and out-of-school play facilities, in line with community wishes?
- What are the potential concerns for communities in creating more, safer play areas for children? How can these be addressed?
- What contribution should parents, children and the wider community be expected to make, to make it easier for children to play?
- What are the main barriers to increasing the priority of play at a local level?
