Unlocking Play: Systemic Solutions for Healthier, More Active Children

Outdoor physically active play is crucial for children’s health, development and wellbeing and it can help to prevent health issues later in their lives. However, in England more than half of young children aren’t active enough, and the drop in activity becomes especially noticeable from around age six.
This problem is even worse in cities with more poverty. In these areas, parks and playgrounds are often closed or not maintained because of council budget cuts. That means children have fewer safe, nearby places to play, additionally children with SEND are seldom catered for. On top of that, parents worry about their children’s safety, other barriers such as poor weather conditional also prevent children playing out and schools, where children spend much of their days, are not prioritising outdoor physically active play. All of this results in children not getting that play and physical activity that the need.
This programme of research aims to address barriers to children’s outdoor physically active play providing local and nationally relevant solutions. Four local authority areas will be included, these are Bradford, Blackpool, Tower Hamlets and Barking and Dagenham. All have recently received funding to tackle inequalities in physical activity levels and all have a strong focus on improving play provision within their locality. There are six work packages within the programme, show in the diagram here and are described in the objectives section:
Work package 1 (led by University of Lancashire) will work with representatives from communities and local authorities to develop (or modify existing tools) and evaluate the feasibility and acceptability of an audit and design tool (plus necessary training) which can be used by local authorities and planners that serves three purposes: a) assess the suitability of outdoor spaces within communities for physically activity play, b) support the design/modification of play spaces, and c) evaluate interventions in these spaces. Central to the audit tool will be children’s voice in the assessment of suitability and design/modification of spaces, ensuring their involvement in decision making processes.
Work package 2 (Led by BIHR) will explore what works to build local community readiness for children’s outdoor physically active play in sites identified as suitable for play in each of the four localities. Our previous PDG identified the following barriers to play for which we will identify local solutions a) perceptions of safety (physical and environmental) b) school readiness (as part of the wider community) to engage in off-site outdoor play interventions c) inhospitable weather.
Work package 3 (Led by Cambridge University) will run parallel to work package 1 and 2 in Barking and Dagenham and will explore how children with SEND and their families can be included in auditing and designing play spaces and how local community readiness can ensure the needs of children with SEND and their families, are met in play spaces.
Work package 4 (Led by UCL) will undertake multi-sector engagement and a scoping review to develop nationally relevant guidance on how primary schools can reconcile curriculum demands with the time and opportunity for outdoor physically active play
Work package 5 (Led by Leeds Beckett University) will develop nationally relevant recommendations for designers of play spaces to design out crime in play spaces.
Work package 6 will firstly test the feasibility and then evaluate the process, effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of implementing a whole-system outdoor physically active play intervention, Play in Urban Spaces for Health. PUSH was co-designed during the PDG phase of this research.
The findings and outputs of this work will be shared across the localities we are directly working in and through the ARC networks and Sport England Place partnership networks across the country to ensure knowledge mobilisation.