The Children’s Play Programme Evaluation was commissioned by the Big Lottery Fund in September 2008. The final report of the three year evaluation is now available.

The Children’s Play Programme was funded by the Big Lottery Fund and was part of a wider £155 million Children’s Play Initiative, with the aim of raising the profile of children’s play. The evaluation found that the Children’s Play Programme played a significant role in raising awareness of children’s play at a local level. The programme also led to an expansion of open access play, and engaged children and families in decision making about play spaces.

While engaging local communities was seen as a sucess factor in promoting play opportunities, nearly a fifth of portfolio leads survyed for the evaluation cited negative attitudes to play amongst residents.

You can read the full report here

Frank Field’s Independent Review on Poverty and Life Chances has been published. The review sets out a new approach to end child poverty advocating a greater emphasis on parental support in the earliest years of a child’s life. The review concludes that such is the importance of support and nurture in a child’s early life that the most cost effective way to support young families is through targeted support that begins at conception.  

The review makes two overarching recommendations. The review calls for the establishment of a set of ‘Life Chance Indicators’ to measure the success of making more equal life outcomes for all children. The review also calls for the establishment of the Foundation Years covering conception to age five and forming the first pillar of a new tripartite education system of school and further and higher education.

Click here to read the full report 

The National CAMHS Support Service (NCSS) have developed a Tackling Stigma Toolkit which will be officially launched at the NCSS National Young People’s Participation Conference in Leicester on 28 October. The toolkit has been developed from the Tackling Stigma Framework, designed by Dr Fiona Warner-Gale (2006).

The Tackling Stigma Toolkit is for all professionals, partnerships and organisations who commission and provide children’s and young people’s mental health services. It aids the development of a planned and informed approach to tackling the stigma of children’s and young people’s mental health problems.

Ecorys in partnership with CAMHS Evidence Based practise Unit (CAMHS EBPU) evaluated use of the Tackling Stigma Framework across the six pilot areas where it was initially implemented. The evaluation found that the framework has been beneficial in changing children’s and young people’s beliefs about mental health and stigma.

Click here to download the Tackling Stigma Toolkit

Click here to download the Tackling Stigma Evaluation Report

The Big Lottery Fund has just published a guide about how to involve young people in developing, running and reviewing services and activities at projects. The guide is based on the experiences of projects from BIG’s Young People’s Fund programme, and may be useful to any Reaching Communities projects that work with young people.

Read the report here: http://www.biglotteryfund.org.uk/er_eval_how_to_involve_young_people_in_your_project.pdf