Hackney Play Association
Hackney Play Association
Nicola Butler, Director
The Tab Centre
Godfrey's Place
off Hackney Road
London
E2 7NT
Tel: 020 7729 4664
Fax: 020 7254 9737
Email
Website
Hackney Play Association aims to improve play provision for children in Hackney by liaising with local, regional and national agencies.
History
Hackney Play Association (HPA) was set up in 1972 by a group of parents campaigning for improved play provision in the borough. In its early years, Hackney Play Association focused on developing holiday play schemes. In just over five years, the play association had helped communities and groups set up over twenty-four projects.
The association then mapped the gaps in borough-wide play provision and created projects to fill them. As each project became viable, it was floated off as an autonomous organisation, with its own management and charitable status. Successful examples are still in operation, more than 20 years later.
In the late eighties, as the Greater London Council and Inner London Education Authority were abolished and funding structures changed, Hackney Play Association concentrated on persuading the council to maintain funding for existing play and childcare providers. As a result, the council committed to ?1million-worth of funding to projects in Hackney, securing over 30 holiday play schemes, seventeen school-based play centres, six adventure playgrounds and six other projects.
Consolidating play provision
In the nineties, as Hackney Play Association developed new projects once more, Play on Estates was set up as a mobile project working on four large estates, funded by the Urban Programme and specifically aimed at Turkish, Kurdish, Somali and Bengali and other refugee and displaced communities living in emergency or short-term housing on the estates, and helping them to integrate with the majority communities.
Its research showed that the target communities were reluctant to use play facilities unless playworkers from their cultures were employed, but HPA could not recruit experienced playworkers from these communities because of a lack of training and experience.
Training
HPA responded by setting up a three-year New Communities Training Project, funded by BT in the Community and a variety of other funders, to provide year-long full-time training courses linked to the newly developed NVQ in Play & Playwork, with substantial placements on existing play projects. Monitoring of the placements showed that there was a need for in-service training for existing playworkers, and for infrastructure support to improve the physical environment in many play sites.
Monitoring also revealed a wider need for in-service training in play work practice and additionally for infrastructure support, to improve physical play-site environments. As a result, in 1996, HPA set up in-service training to NVQ Levels 2 & 3 in Play and Playwork alongside associated training, such as Health & Safety, First Aid, Child Protection and Design & Build.
Quality in Play
In the late nineties, as Hackney Play Association's Training Unit forged ahead in service delivery and development, Hackney Play Association continued to campaign and lobby for play provision and improved standards, both in the borough, across London and the UK. After the Torkildsen Report of 1996, Hackney Play Association became a lead member on a steering group created to support out-of-school play services for children across London - which resulted in the establishment of London Play.
The 'missing link' in play provision in London and elsewhere in the late nineties was the concept of quality standards. In 1998, HPA began work to create the country's first play-specific quality assurance system, and in early 2000 Focus Central London TEC funded London Play, who in turn contracted Hackney Play Association to develop the system through a series of pilot workshops and seminars across six London boroughs. Quality in Play has now been published by London Play with a preface by Chris Smith MP, then Secretary of State, Department of Culture Media and Sport.
More recent activities
In 2000/2001, HPA took a look at itself as an organisation to see whether it was practising what it preached. As a first step, it started the process of achieving Investors in People status through a programme funded by Focus Central London TEC and later by the successor East London Learning and Skills Council.
In August 2002, Hackney entered into a 10 year contract with the Learning Trust, where the Early Years and Play Service is based. Hackney Play Association works closely with the section to improve not only the quality of play provision within the borough, but also to ensure that training is available to staff of the trust.
Partnerships are being forged in the context of the Children Act - Every Child Matters agenda.
