Summer Play Centre: a safe place to play

Like most community programmes, we encountered many challenges to opening our summer Play Centre at Avondale Park Primary School, with the main challenges being securing funding to run the programme and getting it COVID-Secure and up and running in such a short time span.

The next challenge was enticing parents back to our service, as many of them still had concerns and anxieties surrounding the risks of COVID-19. Many of our families who were eligible to send their children back to school decided not to, and many more have been avoiding public spaces like parks and playgrounds.

We contacted parents and talked them through our new policies and procedures designed to keep everyone safe within the guidelines of the National Youth Agency – a body overseeing the delivery of Youth Work across the UK. We also received a lot of referrals through RBKC's Social Care and Early Help Teams, as well as local schools and RPT’s other programmes.

Safe delivery

We had to redesign how we delivered our Play Services to keep everyone safe. This included changes to drop-off and collection times, regular hand washing breaks, removal of soft furnishing and certain play equipment, updating risk assessment in line with new guidance and introducing ‘bubbles’ of children and Play Workers who were kept separate through the day.

We also brought in extra equipment in order to avoid cross-contamination; we greatly reduced the capacity of our Play Centre from 110 to 52 children per day in order to comply with social-distancing; and we introduced daily deep cleaning. To avoid sharing harder-to-clean equipment, each child was given a ‘Play Kit’ containing games, a ball, colouring pencils, drawing pads and an activity book.

Focus on mental health

Our activities were focused on wellbeing, health and fitness, as we know that children’s mental wellbeing has really suffered over the last few months. Our approach included morning workouts and running obstacle courses each day. These activities enhance confidence, strength, balance and coordination, as well as mood and self-esteem. We were lucky that the weather was great, meaning that we could keep the children outside and active throughout the programme.

Feedback from parents has been amazing, with many expressing their gratitude that we were able to get this project up and running.

Looking forward

Because the advice from Public Health England and the World Health Organization suggests that COVID-19 will be here for the foreseeable future, we don’t yet know which, if any, after-school Play Centres we’ll be able to open during term-time, but we’re incredibly grateful to all the support that has allowed us to open our Summer Play Centre.

We’d like to thank everyone who donated to our Big Give ‘Champions for Children’ campaign, which has supported this summer Play Centre and given us enough support to run holiday Play programmes throughout the next 12 months.