COVID-19 and children’s play

Uit een email van Robin Sutcliffe, voorzitter van het Britse ‘Play Safety Forum’:

At the last meeting of the Play Safety Forum concern was expressed about the lack of clarity around the statistics relative to Covid-19 and the well being of children. In response to this we agreed that a paper bringing together both the relevant statistics and the detrimental impact of policies on children would be useful. (…) David Ball agreed to put a paper together and Tim Gill and Andrew Yates agreed to act as readers.  (…)

Het bedoelde (Engelstalige) document vind je hier:

COVID and Children’s Play – PSF

Summary: This note has been prepared at the request of the Play Safety Forum1 including,
notably, Play England, Play Scotland, Play Wales and PlayBoard Northern Ireland. The
purpose is to summarise emerging evidence on the effects of play restrictions in terms of
a) reducing the risk of COVID-19 transmission in the population and b) the detriments to
children resulting from the restrictions.
It is concluded that the current UK interventions need to be urgently reviewed because:
• the benefits to children of playing outside bring a host of social, emotional and
physical rewards. These have long been undervalued and at this time appear to have
been completely ignored. Consequently, children are suffering harm;
• the evidence is that the risks posed by COVID-19 to children playing in outdoor spaces
is very low;
• proportionate decision making requires that trade-offs between the risks and benefits
of safety interventions are part of the decision process. The evidence summarised
below is that current UK policy is much more harmful to children than beneficial.