Our Children’s Play programme committed £123 million between 2006 and 2012 to create, improve and develop children and young people's free local play spaces in England. One of our main concerns was to promote the ‘three frees’:
- free of charge
- free to choose
- free to come and go.
We commissioned Ecorys to assess how effective the programme has been at widening access to good-quality and challenging play opportunities, removing barriers to play, involving local communities, and giving children greater choice. The evaluation ran from 2008 to 2011.
Main findings
- Our approach helped to shape play provision in specific ways, rather than just offering more of the same. It expanded ‘open-access’ play, engaged children and families in decisions about play spaces; and addressed local pockets of play deprivation. It also promoted new approaches and mobile play facilities.
- The programme strongly promoted free play, as opposed to more structured activities. This involved giving children the freedom to take risks without coming to serious harm. It succeeded in doing this, offering children access to more challenging activities, such as den-building, fire-play and climbing trees, and in doing so, helped build children’s independence and self-confidence.
- The programme successfully widened access to play, notably for children with disabilities and those living in rural or more deprived areas. Projects helped to improve social cohesion by bringing together children from different localities and social backgrounds. Working closely with community groups helped projects to achieve this, although the approach sometimes uncovered sensitive issues.
- Continuing consultation with children and their families throughout the programme helped shaped the projects to meet beneficiary needs and preferences. It also helped widen access to provision. Good local participation generally helped to sustain projects’ success. But weaker levels of involvement could sometimes delay progress. There were sometimes concerns about anti-social behaviour and about risky play in general.
Overall, the evaluation found that the programme had improved levels of physical activity, self-confidence, independence and creative skills, particularly among children who attended regularly and had additional needs.
Please contact us if you have any comments or questions.