How councils can support children's play – and national policy can help
More than 10 years after it was made law as part of the Children and Families (Wales) Measure (2010), the pioneering ‘play sufficiency’ duty, placing a statutory duty on local authorities to make plans for sufficient children’s play opportunities across their areas, continues to be the context for the children’s play movement in Wales; and a policy initiative of much interest to play advocates everywhere.
In this new blog post from Ludicology, Wendy Russell talks about the latest research project into the legislation and how it is working. The research was conducted with Mike Barclay and Ben Tawil from Ludicology and Charlotte Derry from Playful Places.
Whereas Wendy and colleagues’ earlier research into the play sufficiency duty focused on how local authorities can cultivate the conditions that enable children to play, the focus of this latest article is on ‘what … supports or constrains local authority actions to assess and secure sufficient opportunities for children to play,’ and, therefore, has implications for national policy.
Wendy’s article for Ludicology is a slightly extended version of one that appeared in Play Wales’ magazine ‘Play for Wales’, issue 56, in autumn 2020.