Any time, any place, children are playing. At this stage of the, eh, game, a parent would be hard-pushed to be unaware of the value of play in children's lives - and yet there is no official recognition of its importance. There's no State policy on play, no strategy, no structure. The Government was criticised by the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child for this inadequacy last year, when it recommended that "the child's right to play should be facilitated by the formulation of a national strategy in that area".
To date, the Government has done nothing to address the issue. A report launched at a conference on play last week examines this lack of public policy, and describes how such a policy might be formulated.
Public Policy on Children's Play in Ireland, commissioned by the Children's Research Centre, TCD and the Centre for Social and Educational Research at DIT, focuses on the need to incorporate children's play needs in urban planning. Richard Webb, who wrote the report, summarises: "Research shows that children play everywhere. They play with specially designed play equipment in designated play areas, but given the opportunity, they spend more time moving around the neighbourhood, seeking social contact through their play activity. Children are the most frequent users of the outdoor environment; they spend approximately 40 per cent of their play time travelling from one place to another." More playgrounds (there is currently about one for every 20,000 people in the State) would be a good start, but creating a safer environment for children to play in would actually be more beneficial to them. "Looking closely at how children play, it seems that providing equipped playgrounds has little impact on fulfilling their play needs.
"They need the freedom to roam and explore. But in the last 20 years the number of cars has risen by 80 per cent and the car now dominates the spaces where children could once play safely. This dramatic decrease in mobility reduces the range of social contact children have with neighbours and may contribute to the rise in fears of `stranger danger'. "Their whole environment should be child friendly, with traffic calming measures, safe routes to school and speed restrictions introduced in urban areas, and systems of small areas of open space linked with pathways to enhance their opportunities to move around and play."
Rob Wheway, co-author of Child's Play: Facilitating Play on Housing Estates, told last week's conference about his research into children's play in housing areas and the wider environment. He described structures which had been developed to enhance play opportunities in Britain: "One of the more useful policies which has been implemented by the government there is something known as Home Zone. "Under this scheme, priority is given to pedestrians in residential areas. Since it was introduced last year, there has been a lot of feedback which indicates a sense of community spirit has been reinjected into many areas."
Wheway has been researching children's outdoor play for 10 years. "A lot of inaccurate assumptions are made about how children play. I have spent many years looking at children playing in various housing contexts and, far from being content to be corralled into a designated play area, children use all the opportunities housing estates offer.
`They need places for physically active play and quiet games, places for social contact and places which allow them to be mobile. They want to play `where it's at', which is why you often find them congregating somewhere like outside the local shop. They also play where they can see, and be seen by, someone - if not a parent, than a trusted adult. "Opportunities to play freely like this have been shown to have all sorts of benefits to children. Obviously there are health benefits, but studies have also shown that children who can play out and about safely in their local area have better developed social and physical skills, and are better decisions-makers than their peers who don't have that sort of freedom."
Noir in Hayes, director of the Centre for Social and Educational Research at the DIT, also spoke at the conference. "There is a lot of research which looks at the role of play in early childhood, particularly what could be termed `guided' play. But we have very little on free physical activity play, especially in terms of its developmental role in middle and later childhood.
"A recent review of what international research there is indicates it is very important. We need to study this further, and to look specifically at developments in society which are constraining children's play. "The loss of green space to housing, increased traffic on the roads and segregating play into indoor surroundings and managing it have all had a very serious impact on our children. We should now be looking very critically at how we integrate play into children's lives in the context of both school and child care settings."
The key to that integration is the development of play policies, devised in partnership with communities, Webb says. "A play policy in an organisation will help to ensure staff all have a common understanding of what they are doing and why.
"Under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, Irish children are actually accorded a right to play. It is time we acknowledged that right."
