Play Strategies and Play Action Plans are government sponsored initiatives designed to encourage the take up and spread of play for children’s health and wellbeing.
Many of us live and breathe “strategy”. Along with “objectives, resources, timelines …” in one part of our lives, these are terms that we manipulate daily.
“Play” is another word that forms a regular part of the vocabulary of those of us with young people around. For many of us, that’s part of our ‘other life’.
I wonder if you felt the same as I did the first time I saw “Play Strategy”. To me, it seemed like a contradiction in terms. Can these words sit comfortably alongside each other?
It seems that they not only can, but do – and need to as well. For it seems in our busy society today, we are forgetting some fundamentals.
In the Play Action Plan, play is described as having the characteristics of “fun, uncertainty, challenge, flexibility and non-productivity”. “Non-productivity” – a defining term, that almost seems to be a swear word in today’s global economy. The Play Strategy recognises the need to re-emphasise the importance of play to all children, and spans the home, nurseries and schools, and the community. It draws our attention to the criticality of play to our children’s development, to their ability to understand and learn from their interactions in a stress-free situation. Children build on this experience so that they can make sense of and relate to their surroundings and to the creatures and people in their world.
Play is important both indoors and outdoors. We now know what a significant impact the environment can have on children’s mental and physical health, and the Action Plan draws particular attention to the need to encourage activity and allow ‘free play’ outdoors.
Boldly, the Action Plan calls for children to have “access to nature on a daily basis”. “On a daily basis”! How far away are we from that at the moment? We hear from our discussions with nurseries and schools that many children do not experience ‘the outdoors’, but are exposed only on the short journey from the cocoon of the car into the interior of another building. As working parents, we can identify with this. Who has time these days?
Time and space to play – important goals of the Play Strategy. Well, we know that time is a challenge. At the same time, most of us involved in the care of children are very conscious of the short window of opportunity we have before our children grow up.
Multi partners, including young people, were involved in pulling together the Action Plan from the Play Strategy and are committed to delivering the agreed outcomes. The Action Plan addresses issues at a micro and macro level – there’s talk of training programmes for nursery staff as well as influencing the play policy of local authorities. And it moves to another level too. It promotes consideration of the importance of play and play spaces as part of the design of National Place standards, and seeks to encourage the use of UNICEF’s earlier research on child friendly cities in different parts of the world.
So who is this Play Strategy really for?
I think it’s for me. A wee reminder in my busy life that time and space to play are vital to the children in my world. And it fills me with a renewed vigour to make sure that I do all I can to help them savour the beautiful environment in which we live.
How about you?
http://news.scotland.gov.uk/News/Planning-play-time-591.aspx
Megan from Rain-shine – providers of quality kids waterproof clothing to parents, nurseries, schools and groups.
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