Supportive environments
To encourage positive and supportive family, and other, environments
Anti-Bullying Alliance: a national programme of work
The Anti-Bullying Alliance (ABA) was founded by NCB and NSPCC in 2002 and now has over 60 member organisations that work together to reduce bullying and create safer environments for learning, playing and being cared for. The organisations in the Alliance represent policy, practice and research interests. In 2007, the ABA received funding from the DCSF to raise awareness of how to recognise, prevent and tackle bullying in the education sector. The main activities under this strand of work have included ongoing co-ordination of national Anti-bullying Week, maintenance of the ABA website, the development of an ABA enquiry service, the production of short e-bulletins for members and support for the Young ABA (managed in partnership with the Diana Award).
National Quality Improvement Network
National Quality Improvement Network (NQIN) was set up in 2005 to support the DCSF and the early years and childcare sector in considering the use of quality improvement processes to improve the quality of settings for young children and their families. It has a Steering Group made up of representatives from seven regional networks which cover the whole of England, and a national organisations group. The Steering Group meets every term to consider the current work plan and to discuss key quality improvement issues.
Policy and Parliamentary Information (PPI) Digest
PPI Digest is a weekly round-up of the latest policy and parliamentary information which affects children and young people. Coverage is England, with reference to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland where applicable. Emailed weekly, it covers legislation, parliamentary debates, statistics, consultation documents, policy reports and news. Each item has a brief abstract, details of which UK country it applies to and a web link. The Digest is added to the members' pages of NCB's web site every week.
Every Disabled Child Matters campaign
Every Disabled Child Matters is a national campaign to get rights and justice for every disabled child with a focus on targeting Westminster and Whitehall. The campaign is run as an equal partnership between all four organisations, who each have one seat on the campaign board. Our vision is that disabled children and their parents are able to live ordinary lives. We do this through: raising the political profile of disabled children and their families within central and local government; asking challenging questions to government in order to create the space for effective policy making; seeking to represent a credible voice for disabled children, their families and our campaign network.
'Talkin' Transition' - promoting sustainable travel for children making the transition from primary to secondary school
Past work carried out by Young Transnet has identified that the point of transition between primary and secondary school is a crucial time to engage children and their parents/carers in discussions about transport choices and an ideal time to encourage them to consider a range of travel choices as they plan their new journey to school. This project will help support implementation of the DCSF school travel action plan and associated policy that aims to improve children's health and well-being. Working in partnership with two secondary schools and some of their feeder primaries, NCB will develop and pilot new creative approaches to promoting sustainable travel for children making the transition from primary to secondary school.
Young people and open space
A work plan will be developed and implemented to influence policy development on young people and open public space, generate an increased understanding and tolerance of issues facing young people using public open space, and increase the extent to which young people feel safe and accepted whilst playing or hanging out in public open spaces, particularly those within their local communities.
Case studies of play provision
Play England has developed a database of good practice in play provision. This is available online via the Play England website www.playengland.org.uk. Case studies of good play provision are available to provide inspiration and good practice ideas. The case studies are recorded using a set format of questions and criteria, and will be verified using referees.
Local government reform and its impact on play provision
The project aims to monitor changes in local government to see how they impact on children's play provision. We aim to publicise these changes to the play sector and interpret complex policy documents. In addition, we will lobby for guidance relating to play and play space to be taken forward.
Play England will be developing an indicator that will help measure improvements in play provision. It is hoped that this indicator will be adopted within a suite of indicators that local authorities can use in order to measure improvements in play provision within their local area.
National Centre for Excellence in Residential Child Care (NCERCC)
NCERCC disseminates good practice for children in residential care through the production of relevant materials and resources; hosting and participating in conferences, seminars and training events; and undertaking appropriate media activity in collaboration with relevant NCB departments. It organises an annual sector-wide conference on residential child care, which brings together a wide cross-section of stakeholders to discuss key issues and exchange good practice. Conference proceedings are widely circulated to promote discussion and development.
Trust for the Future: the role of health staff in the transition to adulthood of disabled children and young people
We will work with six local authority areas and Primary Care Trusts (PCTs), consulting with disabled young people on their experiences of this process and their ideas for improvements.
We will also work closely with health and other professionals across services to learn about key challenges and successes and make links with existing projects addressing similar issues.
Play and exercise in early childhood provision
DCMS picks up a certain amount of data on child physical activity through school-based programmes, such as the National School Sport and Healthy Schools Programmes, but there is a lack of information on physical activity in early years provision. In order to fill some of the gaps in their evidence base, DCMS have asked Play England to undertake a research project on physically active play in early years settings, including a review of the existing literature and some settings-based primary research. The project will look at how factors in the child's environment, their relationships with others and adult attitudes affect the extent to which children attending provision play in physically active ways. This is an exploratory study in which the overall methodological approach is observation of children in a small number of pre-school settings, triangulated with more ethnographic data on the environment and data on adult (parent and staff) perceptions collected through interviews. Observation of 16-18 children will take place in three settings in a London borough in autumn/winter 2007.
Creativity and Looked After Young People
Local projects will be developed with looked after children and young people, which are sustainable and of high quality. We will identify effective approaches for embedding creativity in the lives of young people in care, by identifying effective partnership working, creative practices and policy support. We will explore ways in which creative practice can inform, and be informed by, social pedagogic practice nationally and on the evidence of international research. An evidence base will be developed to show the effectiveness of arts and creative practice for children and young people in care in order to inform and influence national policy and decision makers and to deliver a national programme of work.
Building the infrastructure to support parents with mental health and/or substance misuse difficulties
The project will be accomplished through intensive practice development, a model developed and applied successfully across NCB, which draws on organisational development theories and attempts to build on what is working well rather than taking a problem focused approach.
An initial mapping of needs, services, strategic planning and stakeholder perspectives will be undertaken by experienced consultants and an evidence-based analysis will be made of the extent to which the needs of these vulnerable families are being met and what needs to change. This will provide a firm platform for the implementation of the project's primary activities with ongoing input from the steering group led by the project development officer.
Guidance on bullying related to special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND)
The project forms part of government's Safe to Learn guidance for schools. The guidance will discuss: how and where bullying is experienced in both mainstream and special schools - by disabled children and young people and those with SEN; developing, implementing and embedding policies, practices and procedures - specific/additional SEND issues such as pupil participation, school transport, disability equality training; appropriate tactics to encourage children and young people to report SEND bullying.
Evaluation of Play England
The Play England Project is a five-year project of NCB funded by the Big Lottery Fund. The overall aim of this project is to promote strategies for free play and to create a lasting support structure for play providers in England. The evaluation will employ a range of qualitative and quantitative methods over the five years and will collect data from a variety of different sources and informants. These include: collation and analysis of documents and data; stakeholder interviews with the central and regional management teams; stakeholder interviews with representatives from government, national, regional, and local agencies and networks; survey of local authorities; survey of Children's Play Council members; and case studies of local authorities. In subsequent years, case study areas will be visited again to explore how play strategies are being implemented at local level, what outcomes and impacts are achieved and the sustainability of play infrastructures. The evaluation team will report to Play England annually.
Cards for Little Lives
Cards for Little Lives will extend the very successful 'Cards for Life' series, which was first published by NCB in 2005. NCB will consult with a range of children aged 7-11 and their carers, workers or teachers to identify real life dilemmas, which their age group has to address on a regular basis. These dilemmas will be 'worked up' into a scenario, which can be used with a set of questions to facilitate discussion and skill building. Each scenario will have a moral aspect, which requires children to think about the scenario and work out what they would do in this 'real-life' situation and the support and help they would need.
Assessing the quality of play provision
Building on work carried out as part of Play England's Play Indicators project, this project has tested the Play Space Quality Assessment Tool with children and young people, playworkers and parks managers and finalised a tool for assessing the location, play value and maintenance regimes of unsupervised play areas.
Children Make Places
Research with children and young people and other stakeholders in public space.
Client guide to playable spaces (Design for Play)
The design guide will be aimed primarily at people in local authorities and other providers of play areas. It will encourage those responsible for commissioning play areas to take an individual approach to each space, ensuring that the design not only offers children a variety of play experiences but also compliments and enhances the surroundings.
Free play in early childhood
The main focus of the review will be to identify and analyse research studies into play in early childhood with particular reference to: free play in early development (birth to 7 years); free play as a tool for learning (birth to 7 years); the role of adults in children's early development through play; the benefits of free play in early childhood provision to children, families and communities; and the consequences of children not having the range of play opportunities they need.
Play impact assessment
Key indicators for positive (or negative) impact on outcomes will be the existence (or not) of factors that facilitate (or hinder) outcomes based on the seven key objectives for play provision specified by the Children's Play Council in 'Best Play' (2000). That is, whether a policy directly or indirectly facilitates or impedes these objectives.
Review of the Charter for Children's Play
The Charter for Children's Play in the 21st Century (working title) is likely to become the underpinning document for the work of the Children's Play Council and Play England for the foreseeable future. As well as a proposed revision of the document in its current form we are also looking for recommendations for new and different forms of the main charter points for use in: media campaigns, manifestos, policy briefings and other ways of influencing a wide range of relevant agendas.
Reviewing the Evidence for Play
Play for a Change (2007), illustrates substantial and wide-ranging evidence of the importance of play in the lives of children. Despite this, discussion of play has been consistently undervalued in public policy for children, which tends to focus on children's development into adulthood while overlooking the importance of the physical, social, cultural and emotional worlds that children both inhabit and create in their daily lives. Since the completion of this review, the Government has published The Children's Plan (DCSF 2007) and Fair Play, a draft national play strategy (DCFS 2008). These recent and much-welcomed initiatives offer the potential to redress this situation through acknowledging that play is fundamental to children's enjoyment of their everyday lives.
Quality in Play
Quality in Play is a quality assurance scheme for out-of-school play and childcare provision to ensure quality play opportunities for children. Many play providers already use the scheme to demonstrate good practice and the quality of their service to parents, communities and funders. The scheme was developed by playwork practitioners and is based on established playwork values.Play England took over the management of Quality in Play from London Play in 2008 in order to expand the scheme and raise standards of staffed play provision across the country. Play England rewrote and rebranded the scheme in November 2008 and is now rolling it out across the country through a series of training and information sharing events.
Places to Go
The vision is for children and young people to be widely regarded as respected and rightful stakeholders of public space, with travelling and transport needs that are met with appropriate investment and supportive policy delivery at the local, regional and national levels. The project is calling for more child friendly streets and public space; increased participation of children and young people in local transport and planning decisions; greater investment in safe local streets where children can cycle and walk, without fear of traffic; increased investment and policy development of sustainable transport; and more affordable and accessible public transport for young people.
Consultation for CAMHS review
The review is one of several announced in the Children's Plan and NCB is conducting focus groups and interviews with young people and supporting a young person's reference group. Seven focus groups, in a range of geographical locations across England, will include different levels of user experience of mental health problems, (i.e. those with direct experience of mental health problems; those with 'significant other' experience; and, those with no direct experience). Topic guides for the focus groups will be drafted by NCB and agreed with OPM. Five in-depth semi-structured interviews with children and young people (one child in custody (or with experience of accessing CAHMS whilst in custody); two young people who have gone through transition from CAMHS to adult services; and two with experience of CAMHs and substance misuse issues). A core reference group of 10-14 children and young people with experience of mental health issues will be established.
Risk in play: research to support Playday 2008
Playday is a national campaign which celebrates children's right to play. The focus of Playday 2008 is risk in play - supporting children's access to play opportunities that involve challenge, adventure and risk. Eight focus groups were set up with children aged 8-13 in six locations in England with the aim of exploring how children and young people experience risk in play, how they talk about risk, what they see as the positive and negative aspects of risk, how they assess risk, what constrains them from taking risk, and whether they would like more opportunities for risk in play. The groups took part in a range of school and play settings and discussion, pair work and stimulus material were used to explore children's perspectives.
The Good Childhood Inquiry: consultation with diverse groups of young people
As well gathering research evidence and talking to adults, this project will gather the views from children and young people in Northern Ireland. The Children's Society has identified six groups of children and young people they wish to consult: children with disabilities, traveler children, children under five years of age, children in secure accommodation, children in public care and refugees and asylum seekers. Each group will meet once to discuss one of the following themes: friends; family; learning; lifestyle and health and diet.
Evaluation of School Based Health Centres in Greenwich
In response to relatively high teenage pregnancy rates in Greenwich, school based health centres (SBHC) were established in six schools to support young people's health and well-being and raise their awareness of local services. This evaluation examined whether SBHC are an effective way of providing health services for young people. In particular, the evaluation provided early evidence of pupils' use of SBHC, their awareness and use of other local services as a result, and the impacts of SBHC on young people's health and well-being. It also investigated if and how SBHC improved the overall quality and experience of health provision for young people via changes in staff behaviours, knowledge and confidence. Finally, the evaluation examined the relationship between PSHE and SBHC. The evaluation comprises five components: interviews with key staff involved in the SBHC; interviews with key strategic service leads; a survey of young people in the target schools; interviews with young people in the target schools; and secondary data analysis of existing monitoring and evaluation data.
Community Play Programme
Support will be given to volunteering in play provision and to enabling community engagement in the playbuilder and play pathfinder programme. Work will be done with the volunteering sector to test a new local volunteering infrastructure to support play in new play spaces.
Evaluation of the Parents, Education & Learning (PEAL) Project
PEAL originated as a consortium project of NCB, Coram Family and the London Borough of Camden. Its core aims include identifying and disseminating existing effective practice in engaging parents, by rolling out a core model of training, with materials, to help practitioners to engage parents in supporting their children's early learning. In 2007, with funding from the DCSF, and in conjunction with partner organisations, PEAL training was rolled-out to practitioners working with young children in home-based and group settings. This evaluation focuses on practitioners who have undertaken PEAL training and/or taken the accreditation route. Telephone interviews with practitioners across a range of early years settings will explore the changes practitioners have made as a result of PEAL training and/or accreditation, and the impact this has had on individuals and settings, as well as on parents and children. A key element to this evaluation is to find out what the accreditation adds to individuals and settings, and how the accreditation has impacted on work with parents and children.
Research on Private Fostering
The research will be largely qualitative and will include the following activities: a review of UK literature; international comparison of policy and regulations; analysis of existing data from the DCSF; interviews with key national stakeholders; a survey of the children's workforce and of BAAF's private fostering special interest groups; and qualitative case studies in up to eight local authorities.
Childminding Practice in England
The project will include a survey of childminders, interviews with childminders, focus groups with parents who use childminders and observations of childminding settings. There will be a review of information available from Ofsted on its approach to childminding inspection.
Playday: The Annual Celebration of Children's Right to Play
Playday takes place every year on the first Wednesday in August, with hundreds of locally organised events taking place across the country. An annual playday campaign strategy is developed and delivered, and includes research, media activities and recruiting national supporters. Ongoing support is provided for local Playday event organisers, including a website, training seminars, promotional materials, and a responsive advice and information service.
Third Sector Adventure Play Grants Programme
The project will monitor progress on how playgrounds update and modify their play spaces to see how they meet the programme criteria. A key component of the programme is a requirement that children's wishes and ideas inform the planning and delivery of the projects. Learning from the grants programme will be shared with the 30 new play pathfinder adventure playgrounds being developed through the Play Strategy investment, and with the wider adventure playground sector.
Department for Children, Schools and Families Children and Youth Board 2009 - 2011
Twenty five 10-18-year-olds will be recruited to serve on the DCSF Children and Youth Board. They will receive training in a variety of areas including team building, their role and responsibilities, how government and the DCSF work, how policy is made and how it affects practice, the principles of participation and inclusion, valuing diversity, communications and presentation skills, how to undertake local/regional consultation work, how to plan local events, how to represent the views of others, building confidence, listening skills, and resolving conflict. Residential events and meetings with DCSF directors and the Under Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families will be organised.
Child Safety Education Coalition
Members of the coalition will work together to identify common and avoidable injuries to children and young people. Activities where practical safety education could be improved, extended or introduced will be identified to provide children with opportunities to develop risk competence appropriate to their age and developmental stage. These skills will be transferable to all aspects of their lives and will enable children and young people to have the confidence to put their risk competence into practice.
Having Your Say in the Youth Justice System
The project will describe the current legal and policy framework for young people's participation within youth justice services and the mechanisms currently in use for the participation of young people at different stages of involvement within youth justice services, from prevention to custody/resettlement. It will review relevant literature, identify and interview national experts/stakeholders, and seek the views of local practitioners and young people involved in the youth justice system, including YOTs, service providers and secure establishments.
Department of Health Strategic Partnership: Third Sector Investment
This project falls under NCB's Voluntary Sector Support Programme. It acts as a voice for the children and young people's third sector, representing its interests to the Department of Health, and feeding the Department's policies and initiatives back to the third sector.
Creativity and Looked After Children and Young People - Phase 2
Local projects will be developed with looked after children and young people, aged between 8-15 years, which are sustainable and of high quality. We will identify effective approaches for embedding creativity in the lives of young people in care, by identifying effective partnership working, creative practices and policy support. We will explore ways in which creative practice can inform, and be informed by, social pedagogic practice nationally and on the evidence of international research. An evidence base will be developed to show the effectiveness of arts and creative practice for children and young people in care in order to inform and influence national policy and decision makers and to deliver a national programme of work.