Explore Play Wales
In our new research report, What children say about play in Wales: 2022, nearly 7,000 children and teenagers in Wales tell us about how satisfied they are about their opportunities to play in their local area.
Written by Dr David Dallimore, a research consultant specialising in early years childcare and play, this report presents a picture of children’s play satisfaction in Wales in 2022. But, more importantly, it provides the opportunity for children and teenagers’ voices to be heard, highlighting:
- the importance of play in their lives
- what’s good and what’s not so good about the play opportunities in their local area
- how satisfied they are about when, how and where they can play.
The report includes findings about children and teenagers’ satisfaction with the time, space and permission they have to play, as well as the impact of COVID-19 on their opportunities to play. To emphasise children’s voices throughout, it also features insightful quotes from children and teenagers of all ages from across Wales.
Most children and teenagers across Wales have told us that when they are allowed out, feel safe, and able to play in the places they want to, they are happy with their choice of spaces to play. Overall, children and teenagers are satisfied with their opportunities to play. However, some groups of children and teenagers stand-out in their reporting of low satisfaction with their play opportunities. These include disabled children and teenagers and ethnic minority children and teenagers.
In 2022, Play Wales asked local authorities in Wales to share the results from their Play Satisfaction Surveys. The survey is used by local authorities to consult with children and teenagers as part of their Play Sufficiency Assessments. Of the 22 local authorities, 17 responded and 15 were able to provide anonymised data in a format that could be analysed.
Thank you to all our local authority partners who worked with us in planning, collecting, collating and sharing the data. Having a standardised survey that is now being used by most local authorities means that we can reliably record children and teenagers’ voices from across the country.