Why policy for play?
The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child
Opportunities to play are recognised as a human right for children by the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) of 1989, a legally binding international treaty – in fact, the most widely adopted such treaty in history.
Children will play wherever they get the chance but adequate play opportunities need physical and social space - as well as the time and the permission to enjoy it. Because they are not financially or socially independent, children's right to play cannot be left to the market. The UNCRC obliges governments to provide or enable the space and the opportunities for children to play within the public realm - not to simply leave it to the leisure industry or to volunteers.
Barriers to play
Playing, for children, is surpassed in importance only by the need to be loved, cared for and nourished. Insufficient and inadequate play provision can be profoundly detrimental, affecting children's happiness, health and future life chances. Yet the modern world has erected many barriers, and children all too often find their play marginalised, undermined or compromised by adult concerns. According to some estimates children in the UK today have less than a tenth of the freedom to play outside enjoyed by children only 40 years ago.
Changing this needs concerted and long-term coordination of government policy. The International Play Association (IPA), for example, has called for the coordination of at least five different areas of public policy for the realisation of the right to play: health, education, welfare, leisure and planning. (Others would add housing, transport, traffic, parks and policing).
UN General comment on the right to play
Recent years have seen advances in play policy in various parts of the world. As the movement to promote the right to play has developed and matured it has made some significant progress. In 2013, the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child published a General Comment on Article 31 of its Convention, which includes the right to play. This important document clarifies the responsibility of nation-states to "respect the right to play; to fulfil the right to play; and to protect the right to play".
play strategies
It has long been a principle for advocates of children’s play that the very nature of play – it’s ubiquity, spontaneity, and refusal to be defined or contained – demands a response from society that extends far beyond the provision of discreet playgrounds, important as these may sometimes be.
Children need opportunities to play throughout their day, and in a variety of contexts. The environments where they live, grow up, and go to school, should contain the conditions that enable children to play.
But the built environment takes time to grow and develop and has many competing demands on it – from the economy, transport, and different parts of the community. Making it safe and accessible for children to play and have a degree of mobility requires concerted and strategic planning.
play strategies in public policy
‘Housing, education, parks and health (should work together with planners) so that children and their parents can feel they belong to a community that is intimate’
– Lady Allen of Hurtwood
The play pioneer, Lady Allen of Hurtwood, who famously brought adventure playgrounds to the UK, also recognised this wider need, calling for the coordination of planning and other local departments to engender the creation of play-friendly neighbourhoods wherever children live.
THE LONDON MAYOR, 2005
After many years of campaigning by advocates (often playworkers, inspired by Lady Allen’s vision), in 2005, the Mayor of London adopted this principle in the first London Plan, which called for London Boroughs to adopt cross-cutting play strategies and issued guidance for a recommended process in their preparation.
Play Strategy for England, 2008
The Mayor’s initiative was hailed as a breakthrough in public policy for children’s play, and the principle of area-wide play strategies was soon adopted by the national Children’s Play Council as a major aim of its campaigns. This led, first, to the Big Lottery Fund and, then, the national government in England, taking a similar approach. Their successive national funding programmes – the Children’s Play Initiative and the national Play Strategy respectively – allocated a total of £390m to every top and second-tier local authority in the country, subject to their production of a local play strategy.
The Play Strategy was intended to cover a ten-year period from 2008, with the funding to build and improve play areas only the start of an ambitious plan to transform England into ‘the best place in the world to grow up,’ by using the play strategy model to develop genuinely child-friendly environments in every residential area.
Austerity
The profound impact of the financial crisis and its effect on economic policies everywhere undermined this progress. In times of austerity, children's free play provision came to be seen as a soft target for spending cuts and the second decade of the millennium saw drastic reductions in spending and planning for children’s play.
The story of the campaign for the Play Strategy for England, what it achieved, and its premature demise, is related in the 2015 book, Policy for Play - responding to children’s forgotten right, by Adrian Voce.
Building back better
The coronavirus pandemic has highlighted the vital importance of space to play for children and their families. In the months and years ahead, as we emerge from lockdown with a commitment to ‘build back better’, many local authorities, other public bodies and private developers will want to resurrect their old play strategies or create new ones that again place the play needs of children at the centre of a liveable built environment, and a child-friendly public realm.
Our Play Strategy Service
Our team of consultants, led by the former director of Play England Adrian Voce OBE, has a wealth of experience in play strategy development.
To enquire about our play strategy consultation and development service or for any other enquiry about our work, please complete the form here