Explore Play Wales
From 5 to 9 October it’s Play in Healthcare Week, an annual awareness week showcasing the importance of providing the opportunity, space and time for play to children in hospitals.
To mark the week and to raise awareness, we are announcing a new play in healthcare project and sharing resources that highlight the importance of play for children and teenagers who are patients in hospitals and other healthcare settings. The resources are aimed at supporting those responsible for providing opportunities for children of all ages to play in healthcare settings, such as hospitals and children’s hospices.
Play in healthcare information sheet
This information sheet explores the positive impact of play on the wellbeing of children and teenagers who experience serious illness and hospital treatment. It describes the various skilled and specialised roles of the health play workforce and discusses how each role supports a therapeutic play process that helps sick children adapt to a healthcare setting.
Play in healthcare also explains why it is important to provide children in healthcare settings with different spaces and opportunities for play, including playrooms, spaces for older children and outdoor spaces.
Focus on play – Play in healthcare
This issue of Focus on play provides information about the importance of play in healthcare settings, for children’s wellbeing and happiness. It explains how play has been proven to have a positive impact on the wellbeing of children and teenagers in hospitals and healthcare settings, and their ability to cope with fear, pain and treatment.
Endorsed by Starlight Children’s Foundation, this briefing also describes the economic benefits of providing play in healthcare settings, It also makes recommendations for healthcare policy in Wales in relation to improving play provision in hospitals and healthcare settings.
Play Well in Wales project
Play Wales has begun working with Starlight – the UK charity for play in healthcare – to deliver the Play Well in Wales project. The project, designed to support a strategic approach to play in healthcare settings across Wales, will run over a two-year period. It focuses on embedding the Play well toolkit (developed by NHS England) within two NHS trusts in Wales, alongside providing family support and professional training to strengthen play-based approaches in paediatric care.
The Play well toolkit, published by NHS England and Starlight in 2025, brings together commissioning and service-design guidance, recommended standards and a quality checklist to help services plan, deliver, assess and improve high-quality health play provision for children.
Early work on this new project includes bringing together health play managers and establishing a Play Well in Wales Task Force with key stakeholders working within the children’s health play system in Wales.