Anne Aslett

‘Give children the chance to play’ – national UK play organisations join forces to demand action - Child in the City ‘Playday’ in the UK – held on 7 August – was an opportunity for the four national play organisations to urge policymakers to deliver on a child’s right to play. As thousands of children and young people came together to celebrate play at local and regional events, the four leading play organisations said that the formation a new UK government provides is a ‘timely opportunity to highlight the need for a renewed commitment to play at all levels across society’. In a joint call Play England, PLAY WALES / CHWARAE CYMRU, Play Scotland and PlayBoard NI said that despite there being robust evidence highlighting the multiple benefits of play, it is an issue that governments have ‘consistently overlooked’. ‘Urgent action’, they added, was now required in order to ensure that children and young people able to fully realise their right to play. Eugene Minogue, Executive Director at Play England said: “Playday provides us with an important and timely reminder of the cultural value of play! Ask adults what they loved most about being a kid, and their mind is likely to drift back to the games they played with other children. Some of the best childhood memories are rooted in long summer days playing games outside, many culturally unique to the UK – such as kerby, headers and volleys, hopscotch, bulldog, skipping and many more! “However, children today are experiencing many barriers to play. As their freedom and opportunities to play have declined, so has their physical and mental health as a result. It is therefore vitally important that the new government urgently address the decline in children’s play over recent decades. We need to give children their childhood back! That’s why we are calling for the introduction of play sufficiency legislation and development of a new national play strategy in England.” ⤵️ https://lnkd.in/gWCHVGSR Together, with Government we can deliver transformational change and secure a legacy for our future generations by giving children their childhood back! Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government - Legacy Department for Culture, Media and Sport Department for Education Department of Health and Social Care Department for Transport (DfT), United Kingdom 10 Downing Street 🏫🚸🌿🍁🍂🪵 🚲 🛴 🛹🛼 🛝 🏃🏼‍♂️🏃🏼‍♀️🏃🏾👩‍🦽🚴🏿🚏🚶🏻🤸🏾‍♂️🤸🏼‍♂️🌳🏘️ #PlaySufficiency #NationalPlayStrategy #RaisingTheNation #PlayCommission #PhysicalLiteracy #PhysicalActivity #PlayStreet #SchoolStreets #StreetPlay #HomeZones #Playgrounds #Parks #FreerangeUrbanNeighbourhoods #FUN #Playces #Splace #KnowBallGames #FreePlay #UNCRC #Article31

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UK Youth welcomes the Lib Dem manifesto commitment to increasing investment in youth services and supporting collaboration between the professionals who work with young people.   Evidence shows that youth work reduces pressure on public services in the short term. It also shows that young people who receive youth work become happier, healthier and wealthier adults compared to those who didn’t receive support. The next Government cannot afford to ignore young people and youth work.   During this election, all parties need to commit to:  - Deliver the long-term leadership and investment needed to unlock youth work for all young people.  - Prioritise youth workers as essential roles – alongside teachers, social workers, and therapists - for implementing effective policies for young people.  - Listen to young people by embedding youth voice into policy-making. https://lnkd.in/eYEpePeN

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‼️‼️‼️‼️‼️ With nearly half of voluntary youth work providers unable to operate beyond six months without local authority funding, how can we ensure sustainable support for the youth services our communities rely on? It's time to rethink how we fund and prioritise our essential services. What solutions can we bring forward? #YouthWork #FundingCrisis #SupportYouth #SustainableChange

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FUNDING: Seven Friends Foundation – Grants for Unpopular Causes in Deprived Areas The Seven Friends Foundation has reopened for applications. It offers small grants of between £300 and £3,000 to charities and charitable projects in deprived areas of the UK that are unpopular or do not receive widespread public attention. This could be due to negative focus within the media, difficulty accessing funding, political controversy, or the issue is not typically seen as a charitable cause. Examples of these types of groups or causes could be asylum seekers, ex-offenders, sex workers, LGBT and people experiencing violence or abuse. The programme will primarily support small organisations (annual income up to £300,000), with most grants under £1,000. Organisations interested in applying should do so here https://sevenfriends.org/ by the 1st of August 2024.

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Really proud of this one. Today, UK Youth is publishing a new report with Institute for Government that sets out a clear path for government to unlock the power of preventative services, including youth work. https://lnkd.in/e8vEYwDf Preventative local authority spending on services like youth clubs and children’s centres was cut by more than three-quarters (77.9%) between 2009/10 and 2022/23, while acute spending on looked after children and safeguarding services rose by more than half (58.1%) over the same period. This is bad economics and it is hurting young people. Rather than just point out the problem, this report sets out a clear roadmap for the next government to transform millions of lives and save billions of pounds. The rapidly rising needs of young people – with threats to their mental health, employment, and even physical safety – are not inevitable. We have clear evidence of what works to change this trend. Now we need policymakers to play their part and make the long-term commitment required.

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💚 THIS is why we do #AppliedCreativityLabs (www.weareive.org/acl) with children and young people to help them find new solutions to climate change issues.....We can't deliver them without funding/support/sponsorship. 🫶Please do get in touch if you are interested in helping to sponsor us to work with young people! - [email protected] ⏰ There's no avoiding this anymore...we have to change how we live and work - and fast. 🫖This new climate action report from Yorkshire and Humber Climate Commission is brilliant...it's a long read so make a cuppa! ♻️'Act like it’s an emergency. Climate change will impact on us all – and we’re perilously close to the point at which we will trigger dangerous levels of warming. Action on climate and nature must be right at the heart of all decision-making. The population of Yorkshire and the Humber is larger than some countries, so what we do and don’t do really matters. 🤝To have a chance of meeting the net zero target, we need to cut our emissions rapidly by moving away from fossil fuels. That involves continuing the rapid expansion of renewable energy, investing in smart energy grids, and upgrading our homes, buildings, businesses and transport systems to reduce their energy demand. We also need to switch to a resource efficient, circular economy and rethink consumption in key areas such as food, fashion and flying. 🍃Crucially, we need to recognise that the climate crisis goes hand-in-hand with the nature crisis, and we can only address one by also addressing the other. 🌳 We must put nature first in decision-making and promote climate actions that will aid nature’s recovery. That means making more space for nature, as well as restoring peat bogs planting trees where appropriate and enabling more people to realise the wellbeing benefits of using natural green spaces. We also need to invest in our readiness and resilience in the face of growing climate impacts. These include extreme weather events such as floods and severe heatwaves, but also threats to our food supply from failed harvests or new diseases such as tick-borne illnesses. 🏡 This will involve adapting our homes and communities, our water, energy, transport and communications infrastructure, and our farming and food systems, and restoring nature. All of these aspects of resilience are essential to our future health and wellbeing....This is a huge agenda that spans decades. 💡 More than anything, we need leaders – in politics, business, civil society and beyond – to embrace change, to be open to new thinking, and to take the necessary actions. ' Chris Strong Drew Rowlands Jo Lee Evangeline Harrison Jonathan Straight FRSA Nick Street Emma Heaps Lesley Jennings #climateaction #climatechange #climateresilience #creativity #innovation #charity #charitysupport #WeareIVE Web Link https://lnkd.in/eQY-7hay

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