{"id":642,"date":"2008-08-01T09:30:14","date_gmt":"2008-08-01T08:30:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/research.canterbury.ac.uk\/centre-for-sport-physical-education-and-activity-research\/?p=642"},"modified":"2026-01-27T11:20:11","modified_gmt":"2026-01-27T11:20:11","slug":"policies-and-play","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/research.canterbury.ac.uk\/centre-for-sport-physical-education-and-activity-research\/policies-and-play\/","title":{"rendered":"Policies and Play"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Play England commissioned spear to conduct a study to assess the impact of national policies and legislation on young people\u2019s opportunities for play and informal recreation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A review of national policies and legislation showed that recreational activities for young people regularly feature \u2013 but play is not always mentioned. This was seen to be true even when policy documents were uniquely about children\u2019s free-time activities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:50px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>Key Recommendations<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Consistent constructions of play need to be explicit in all national policy documentation and should be supported by strong implementation and monitoring mechanisms.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>A clear distinction needs to be made between the&nbsp;<em>purpose&nbsp;<\/em>of childcare and the&nbsp;<em>purpose<\/em>&nbsp;of play provision, in each case supported by the appropriately qualified staff.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Further research is needed into how&nbsp;the Children&#8217;s Fund has impacted on the play opportunities for children aged 8 to 13 years old (an age group&nbsp;often not referred to in policy documentation).<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Evaluation of the impact of the Big Lottery Fund&#8217;s Children&#8217;s Play initiative, to see if funding has increased and improved access to good-quality play opportunities for children and young people.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:50px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Date:<\/strong>&nbsp;2008<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Client:<\/strong>&nbsp;Play England&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:50px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-file\"><a id=\"wp-block-file--media-5bfc3fd2-4ceb-4933-bfbc-19a4fd01ac00\" href=\"https:\/\/research.canterbury.ac.uk\/centre-for-sport-physical-education-and-activity-research\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/9\/2021\/06\/Policies-and-Play-Report.pdf\">Policies and Play Report<\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/research.canterbury.ac.uk\/centre-for-sport-physical-education-and-activity-research\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/9\/2021\/06\/Policies-and-Play-Report.pdf\" class=\"wp-block-file__button wp-element-button\" download aria-describedby=\"wp-block-file--media-5bfc3fd2-4ceb-4933-bfbc-19a4fd01ac00\">Download<\/a><\/div>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:50px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Play England commissioned spear to conduct a study to assess the impact of national policies and legislation on young people\u2019s opportunities for play and informal recreation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":94,"featured_media":2050,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[206],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-642","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-play-england"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"authorName":"Laura Ackerley","postExcerpt":"Play England commissioned spear to conduct a study to assess the impact of national policies and legislation on young people\u2019s opportunities for play and informal recreation.","featuredImage":"https:\/\/research.canterbury.ac.uk\/centre-for-sport-physical-education-and-activity-research\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/9\/2008\/08\/AdobeStock_381810128-1-scaled.jpeg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/research.canterbury.ac.uk\/centre-for-sport-physical-education-and-activity-research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/642","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/research.canterbury.ac.uk\/centre-for-sport-physical-education-and-activity-research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/research.canterbury.ac.uk\/centre-for-sport-physical-education-and-activity-research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/research.canterbury.ac.uk\/centre-for-sport-physical-education-and-activity-research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/94"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/research.canterbury.ac.uk\/centre-for-sport-physical-education-and-activity-research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=642"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/research.canterbury.ac.uk\/centre-for-sport-physical-education-and-activity-research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/642\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2054,"href":"https:\/\/research.canterbury.ac.uk\/centre-for-sport-physical-education-and-activity-research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/642\/revisions\/2054"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/research.canterbury.ac.uk\/centre-for-sport-physical-education-and-activity-research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2050"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/research.canterbury.ac.uk\/centre-for-sport-physical-education-and-activity-research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=642"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/research.canterbury.ac.uk\/centre-for-sport-physical-education-and-activity-research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=642"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/research.canterbury.ac.uk\/centre-for-sport-physical-education-and-activity-research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=642"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}