Resources
IPA Play in Crisis
In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the IPA community developed new resources to help parents and carers to support children’s play. Topics include the importance of playing in times of crisis, and how to respond to children’s play needs. They offer information about how to deal with issues that may concern parents like children playing with themes of loss, death and loneliness. During times of crisis, playing helps to help give children a sense of normality and joy.
The resource in its entirety can be found here: The Importance of Playing in Crisis Booklet. If you would rather see an individual section, you can download each one below.
Section One – The importance of playing during crisis
Section Two – Supporting your child’s play during a crisis
Section Three - Thinking about your child's play
Section Four- Playing that involves difficult themes such as loss, illness and death
Section Five – Managing play at home that feels noisy or destructive
Section Six – Messy play at home
Section Seven – Things to play with around your home
Section Eight – Make the most of your time outside
Section Nine – Internet and screenbased play – finding a balance
Section Ten – Playing when you cannot go outside
There are also more than eight translations of this resource available via IPA World, including in Japanese, Arabic and Chinese. The resources were updated in 2022 to be of particular service to the children and families fleeing the war in Ukraine, and were translated by volunteers into Ukrainian, Polish and Hungarian.
Children’s Right to Play Resources
A Richer Understanding of Children’s Right to Play booklet
This booklet was created by IPA Scotland in 2016 to help people explore children’s right to play, to question further, demystify the jargon, and take the reader into a richer understanding of article 31. The focus is understanding play as a right of children rather than as an activity. You can download the booklet here.
Article 31 Posters
There are some wonderful article 31 posters that have been produced in multiple languages. Here are direct links to the English and Scottish Gaelic versions:
English article 31 poster: A4 portrait A3 landscape
Scottish Gaelic article 31 poster: A4 portrait A3 landscape
Find the poster in other languages directly from IPA World.
Article 31 - the General Comment
In 2013 the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child produced its General Comment on children’s right to play. General Comment 17 has influenced implementation of article 31 worldwide and supported advocacy and engagement ever since. IPA Scotland is proud of its role in the development of the General Comment. You can also find the comment translated into all the official UN languages here.
In addition, IPA Scotland collaborated with the Bernard van Leer Foundation to publish a Working Paper on Children’s Right to Play, IPA World produced a summary of the General Comment, and Scotland’s Commissioner for Children & Young People and IPA Scotland co-produced a review of article 31 in Scotland.
Under the Same Sky
On 23rd September 2016, The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child held a Day of General Discussion at the Palais de Nations in Geneva, Switzerland. The focus was on Children’s Rights and the Environment.
The two aims for the day were:
to promote understanding of the relationship between children’s rights and the environment
to work out what needs to be done so that children’s rights and environmental issues are linked up to make better laws and policies and to improve what people actually do about them.
The International Play Association highlighted the role of the environment in creating healthy places for children to play. In preparation for the event, the IPA published a IPA Play & Environment Discussion Paper. The IPA also took part in the Day of General Discussion and presented the Under the Same Sky side event with its partners: the Children’s Parliament, the Children & Young People’s Commissioner Scotland, and Terres des Hommes among others. Children from Mozambique, Brazil, Palestine, Zimbabwe, Scotland and Australia explored their experiences of the places they are growing up using a range of creative media that was shared. See the toolkit that was developed here.
The Scottish State of Play
In November 2020 IPA World hosted a six week international webinar series entitled 'Making Cities Child Friendly in the Post Pandemic World: Play and Public Space'.
In week four the session was called ‘Voices from around the World’ and our board member Marguerite Hunter Blair gave an overview of the state of play in Scotland.