Correspondence: Anna Vitale, Town councillor in charge of social and educational policies, Municipality of Ceglie Messapica, Brindisi, Italy. E-mail: anna_vital@libero.it

CASE STUDY

Children ’ s Play: a tool for Public Health interventions

ANNA VITALE

Town Councillor in charge of Social and Educational Policies, Municipality of Ceglie Messapica, Brindisi, Italy

Abstract All children need to spend some time playing outdoors. In Northern European countries, schools are equipped with out-door facilities where children can play during breaks between lessons. The Italian school system, oriented to a mnemonic learning approach, has attached a poor importance to the role of playing for kindergarten age children, and Italian kinder-gartens are not so well equipped for children ’ s active play. Furthermore, Italian teachers and parents worried that while playing outdoors, children might catch a cold or hurt themselves, and discourage active play outside. The equipment of kindergartens ’ open spaces with wooden games, where children can play in the morning or after school, resulted in children ’ s increased time of playing outdoors. These playgrounds are also used during vacation day time by children to play and in the evenings, for theatrical and animation events. Finally, watching over their children when playing, “ forced ” parents to talk to each other creating a social network.

Key words: Play, kindergarten, children, physical activity, social environment

Introduction

Sharing best practices, especially within the Civil Ser-vice, by transferring positive experiences to other con-texts, accounts for an important added value in the management of the res publica (i.e. public good).

In different Northern European countries, includ-ing Germany, Sweden and even Iceland, schools are equipped with outdoor facilities where children can play both unstructured and structured games during adequate breaks between lessons.

In Northern countries, kindergarten children even use to play outdoors in puddles of molten snow in wintertime.

Although Italy has a mild and more beautiful weather than most of the Northern European coun-tries, with many sunny days during winter months, Italian schools are not so well equipped for children ’ s active play, or, even if they are, the facilities in question are not used during the time children spend at school.

Case study

Ceglie Messapica is a town of 20,000 inhabitants, which still keeps the features of a prevailingly rural town with a scarce propensity to change: few public

means of transport, no national railways service, no businesses and sporadic artisanal businesses, no cinema theatres and few recreational or social places. There is only one equipped playground for children.

However, over the last few years, the municipality has put in place several primary services addressed to children and families.

As a teacher, I have always believed that children must and need to spend some time of their school day playing outdoors and, as a member of the Town Council, I have been able to put in place policies intended to promote children ’ s active play. Unfortu-nately this idea, which is substantiated by important evidence-based educational studies, does not fi nd any practical application in the way Italian schools are organized and is, therefore, discouraged by both teachers and parents who seem to be essentially wor-ried by the fact that, playing outdoors, children might catch a cold or hurt themselves.

What is more, statistical studies are highlighting the gloomy outlook of the living conditions of chil-dren during the earliest years of their life more and more. Family often delegates the task of managing their children ’ s recreational and education time to schools; apartments and the isolated of blocks of fl ats do not provide room enough for children to play with

International Journal of Pediatric Obesity, 2011; 6(S2): 57–59

ISSN Print 1747-7166 ISSN Online 1747-7174 © 2011 Informa HealthcareDOI: 10.3109/17477166.2011.613677

58 A. Vitale

their friends, and, even worse, the working hours of both parents seem to compound the situation.

It can be stated, that, on the average, children, who are super cared for, cuddled and over fed, spend most of their day sitting still in their classroom and at home watching television or playing with the Playstation.

One of the fi rst tasks during my tenure as Town Councillor in charge of social and educational policies in a small town in the province of Brindisi was to equip the spaces around schools (courtyards or gar-dens) with those wooden games that are usually found in playgrounds.

The Italian school system, which is highly oriented to a mnemonic learning approach, has always attached a poor importance to the role of playing for kinder-garten and primary school age children as a tool to improve children ’ s health and education level.

The fi nancial crisis with its cuts on school man-agement costs, staff and hours of attendance, has resulted in an additional inattention to the role of play, thus excluding playtime from the school time-table. There is no time left for play in a complex and pervasive educational programme.

Outdoor break-times in schools have been over for years now. Too often, from kindergarten to sec-ondary school, school days are spent inside large buildings.

Therefore, watching Nordic children playing out-doors, during the various break-times in their school day, or admiring the various school laboratories in Sweden has strengthened my belief that it is possible to transfer these better practices to the Italian school. During wintertime children can go outside and play, giving vent to their imagination, creativeness and spontaneity, improving their abilities and moving freely.

In this regard, small changes have been made, and as a town Councillor, I have fi nally been able to implement these changes. It was no easy task at a time of forced budget cuts. Money spent on buying toys and equipment to promote children ’ s develop-ment through playing risks to be considered a waste of resources by some public offi cers and politicians concerned with issues including business districts, public health and employment.

To most children and families, school is a safe place where a comprehensive growth is expected to occur, including not only education, but also health education and socializing. On these grounds, in my capacity of town councillor, I started with an initial allocation of funds destined to purchase new games to be installed not in parks, but in front of the schools.

Saving on some of the Council budget, we began to equip the open spaces in front of kindergartens

and primary schools with games: slides, swings, bridges, ladders and anti-fall mats. Initially this clashed with the mindset of both headmasters and teachers who viewed the games as risky and just a potential source of bad falls. I had to justify my atti-tude and raise their awareness of the use of games as a child ’ s fundamental tool for their physical and mental health.

Some parents complained, “ Children want to stay a little longer to play when school is over at the school entrance, and this is a waste of time ” .

Quite the contrary, it is, by now, a pleasure for me to watch children playing in the morning or after school while their parents are “ forced ” to talk to each other, becoming friends while creating a social net-work, which is very important when they exchange their experiences and support each other. For the children, who start and end their school day with joy, it is an opportunity to i) restore their level of atten-tion, ii) discharge emotion, and iii) breathe in an healthy manner.

As parents and teachers become accustomed to this novelty, more and more classes are starting to go outdoors, during the break-time, when weather is fi ne, both at kindergartens schools and at primary schools and even at municipal day care centres.

At present, I cannot ask for more since new edu-cational methods are being accepted and useless behaviours in terms of wellbeing of children, who spend most of their lives at school, are slowly chang-ing. Playing allows children to move and reduce the risk of obesity which is extremely widespread today. This site equipped with games started three years ago and each year we add something more. This year I have also equipped the Council Gardens and two new gardens with new games.

A survey has also been made to seek out the all suburban public squares suitable for this purpose and, in the years to come, we plan to make them accessible and suitable to host games and reinforce the need to stay outdoors.

Raising funds is becoming more and more com-plex: this year we used the sum taxpayers chose to donate to the Town Concil under the entry “ fi ve per thousand of personal income tax ” of their tax return (Ceglie has been the fi rst Town Council of the prov-ince of Brindisi to receive the 5 per thousand of per-sonal income tax ).

To spread the idea of playing in town, and use the school facilities during summer, we have pro-moted “ the game weeks ” . In the morning the chil-dren play with an animator, they have fun with a variety of team games in the kindergarten play-grounds, and, in the evening, together with their families, they perform and enjoy theatrical shows and street entertainment. These initiatives have been

Children ’ s Play and Public Health 59

families healthier and happier, thus, promoting a future society made by healthy citizens.

Declaration of interest: The author declares that she has no confl ict of interest and that she has no competing interests. She alone is responsible for the content and writing of the article.

successful, with more children who wanted to “ go to kindergarten ” , every morning, even during the holi-days; theatrical and animation evenings have counted hundreds of young spectators, with their parents and often grandparents. This little social policy proposal to safeguard children ’ s well being has shown that empathetic listening with children makes entire