CASC PLAY POLICY

This policy encompasses recent guidelines form the Care Inspectorate ‘My World Outdoors’ 2016 and Scottish Government’s ‘Play Strategy for Scotland,’ 2014, both of which focus on the importance of children playing outdoors.

At CASC we aim to provide a wide range of play opportunities for all of the children attending our after school club. We recognise the importance of children’s play and understand how it contributes to children’s quality of life, their health and their development. We want to ensure that the play opportunities we provide promote the wellbeing and enjoyment of all children. We encourage children to participate in as many different types of play as possible, recognising how involvement in a wide variety of play opportunities helps children to develop emotionally, physically, creatively, socially and intellectually. 

Supporting Play Opportunities
We support and facilitate play by:
•	Gathering information about the needs and interests of each child at the point of registration.
•	Providing an environment that meets the needs and interests of the children.
•	Providing a range of equipment, resources and activities on a daily basis.  
•	Involving children in the planning of play activities to ensure that varied play opportunities are always offered based on children’s interests. 
•	Encouraging children to participate in choosing/requesting the purchasing of resources and equipment for the club and explaining when it is not possible to grant a request.
•	Encouraging children to spend time playing outdoors every day, unless the weather is exceptionally poor.
•	Encourage children to explore their outdoor environment, natural elements and their community.
•	Supporting children’s freedom of expression through artistic and creative play opportunities.   
•	Providing opportunities for children to challenge themselves and try out new things. 
•	Intervening in play only when necessary: to reduce risks of accident or injury, or to encourage appropriate social skills. 
•	Advising children in advance when an activity or game is due to end.
 
•	Encouraging children to be involved in risk/benefit assessments regarding play activities. 

Adventurous and Risky Play

We provide children with the opportunity to challenge themselves through play which allows them to test out their own abilities and to find their own boundaries. We use a Risk/Benefit Approach when assessing play activities.  This means that we encourage children to be involved in weighing up the risks of engaging in a particular type of play along with the benefits.   This increases children’s risk awareness and helps them to identify times when the risks of taking part in an activity or type of play may outweigh any benefits.  Staff work with the children to manage the level of risk in the play environment to suit each individual child’s ability.  Children are then able to find challenges in their play which help them to develop new skills 

CASC has a commitment to provide a safe, healthy and stimulating environment for all children. We value the children and their contributions to the daily life at CASC. Our Play Policy uses the SHANARRI indicators of wellbeing (safe, healthy, achieving, nurtured, active, respected, responsible, included) to evidence the importance and benefits of play, in particular outdoor play. We also use the SHANARRI indicators of wellbeing in our Risk/Benefit Assessments. 
Safe
CASC staff should be aware of the main risks to children and look at ways to balance the risks against the benefits of the activity. Staff should know the child as an individual and be aware of their needs and interests. Children should be encouraged to consider the potential of all risks in their play and supported to manage risk. This empowers children to make safe decisions when playing.

Healthy
CASC recognises the obvious benefits of active play/physical activity. Active play will always be available to children. CASC also recognises the importance of outdoor play. This is always offered to children except in exceptionally poor weather. We also support children’s health and wellbeing by offering play in natural play spaces on most days. The club take the children to Harrison Park on most days and other local amenities are used regularly. 

Achieving
Benefits of playing outside include:
•	An increase in concentration
•	Stimulating creativity
•	Developing problem-solving skills and essential life skills 
CASC provides opportunity for outdoor play every day. We plan to take the children to the local, natural play space in Harrison Park on most days. Our risk-benefit approach allows the children to play and explore the natural play resources uninterrupted. We photograph the children’s play/achievements and highlight these in the setting and on our website.

Nurtured
CASC staff provide a nurturing setting by developing positive relationships and maintaining positive interactions with the children. Our staff are consistent and recognise behaviours children may display as communication. We are sensitive and responsive to the needs and interests of the children in our care and we strive to promote a ‘home-from-home’ environment for the children in our care. We do this by offering children a range of environments to play and interact in. We respect children live busy lives and offer free-space outdoors to play and wind down or have some time to themselves.
Active 
We encourage children to be active. We offer at least one hour’s physical activity a day. We always provide outdoor play and regularly take the children to the local park, swimming pools and nearby football pitches. Many of our children will attend extra-curricular sports activities in the school during their after school club session. We work in partnership with the school, families and providers to ensure as many of our children can attend these activities. 
We have a wide range of physical play resources. The children are consulted and involved in the purchasing of equipment. We value and follow up on the opinions and ideas the children forward and strive to include them in our daily play and learning programmes.

Respected
We respect children when we involve them in planning outdoor play by:
•	Consulting with them about what they would like to do each day.
•	Following up on their views and choices.
•	Giving them space, privacy and time to themselves.
•	Treating them with dignity and encouraging them to treat others similarly.
•	Valuing each child as an individual.
•	Offering them a range of indoor and outdoor play experiences.
•	Allowing them to consider risks in their play and learning. 
•	Praising and highlighting their achievements.
•	Empowering the children to encourage the setting.
•	Modelling the behaviour we encourage in the setting.
Responsible
Children who attend CASC are given opportunities to have an active role in the day-to-day decisions which affect their play and learning. We encourage peer learning in the setting and older children are given the opportunity to mentor or ‘buddy’ younger children. Children are also encouraged to engage positively in the wider community, an example of this is our understanding and adhering to the values of the local community group ‘Friends of Harrison Park’ who have in the past requested that local children respect the trees and garden arrangements. 
Included
The staff team at CASC work hard to ensure all children are respected and included. We encourage the children to have an identity in the setting and to contribute to the daily ‘life’ of the after school club. We respect children’s views and interests towards play and strive to include them in our planning.

When planning our daily activities we consider the ages and needs of the children in the setting and put a real value towards making all play and learning opportunities accessible for all children. We appreciate that our values towards play, including outdoor play opportunities, can be different from the families who use our service therefore we have a real commitment towards offering as flexible a service as possible. Our outdoor play opportunities are often a great leveller between the children we work with and we use the children’s play opportunities to support peer learning, friendships and to develop and maintain relationships between the children and staff.