Play is certainly enjoying a profile it's never had before at the moment. The Conservatives review of childhood is reported to be recommending measures to tackle the fact that the outdoors is 'hostile' to children. The most eye catching idea is bringing back park keepers, which is interesting as it has been reported as though the authors have not noticed the recent appearance of Play Rangers, in almost all regions of England, who are being funded by the local authorities and the BIG Lottery's Children's Play Initiative.
David Willets' review also proposes:
- Increased adult supervision of public spaces, such as park rangers to ensure playgrounds are kept clean of syringes and broken glass and do not become a gathering place for gangs
- Changes to the British Crime Survey, so that it measures crimes against children, which are currently excluded
- "Walking buses" to take groups of children to and from school
- More visible policing on the streets, by cutting back on the bureaucracy which keeps officers behind a desk;
- Councils and police to take a sensitive approach to children playing outside, to create "safer neighbourhoods, not neighbourhoods without children".
- Action on traffic to make streets safer for children.
Certainly these proposals do correspond to a number of the issues we have picked up on during consultation in play and open space provision, but they do seem rather focused on an adult view of the issues around young people and play. There's unsurprisingly a different emphasis from the Government's approach and it appears to be one that says 'yes, it is dangerous out there' (Cameron's theme of breakdown of society again) and we, the Conservatives, are the ones proposing to do something about it. Reading the full report may well give a different picture, as it seems hard to believe the widely respected Tim Gill would have been involved otherwise, having recently published 'Growing up in a risk averse society '.
Cadence Works has picked up one area where the main political parties do appear to be aligned and that is in their agreement that streets needs to be made safer to traffic, but that neither shows any sign of giving any real teeth to policies to address this issue seriously.
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