Seeing the wood for the trees How the regulation of early learning and childcare changed to improve children’s experience of outdoor play in Scotland Henry Mathias, NCS Strategic Lead, Care Inspectorate, Scotland Abstract outside. Children and young people enjoy the service in an environment that takes account of the space standards… More than a quarter of a million children attend registered and makes effective use of space, including outdoor play 1 early learning and childcare (ELC) services in Scotland , areas.” including nurseries, children and family centres, childminders and out of school care. ELC services are Inspectors would ensure that outdoor play areas were regulated by the Care Inspectorate, the statutory body physically safe and adequately equipped and staffed, with responsible for assessing and supporting improvement outdoor activities being regularly risk assessed. While in the standards of social care for adults and children in these tangible inputs had some value in their own right, Scotland. In this paper, the Care Inspectorate’s Strategic ultimately they were proxy indicators with no proven Lead for Health and Social Care Standards explores how correlation to the quality of children’s experience of the regulation and inspection of outdoor play in ELC outdoor play. An outdoor play area can meet the highest settings has evolved and how this has affected children. specification, but this does not mean that the service The role of external scrutiny in helping registered services improve and develop children’s experience of makes the most of this capacity and children enjoy a rich outdoor play is examined. The recent flourishing of outdoor play experience. Indeed, sometimes the highest outdoor play, including the growth of specialist outdoor- quality experiences can be provided by services with based services, is set within a historical context and the relatively poorly resourced outdoor play areas. It is the implications for the current expansion of funded ELC are attitude and engagement of practitioners in outdoor play considered. that is the determining factor. The extensive Growing Up in Scotland longitudinal study (GUS) had evidenced that adult perception of the outdoors makes a difference, with 6 year Playing by the rules olds whose mothers perceive that they live far away from green space watching more television and having worse 2 In 2002 responsibility for regulating ELC transferred from mental and general health . local authorities to new national inspectorates across the UK. The Scottish Parliament introduced National On occasion a service was providing high quality outdoor Care Standards for the first time and established the play, but the paperwork such as risk assessments and Care Commission. In 2011 the statutory duty to regulate accident recording failed to comply with the standards. In social care for adults and children transferred to the these situations, inspectors had no option but to make Care Inspectorate, which also assumed responsibility for formal recommendations regarding the paperwork and strategic inspection of social work and child protection these relatively minor breaches could dominate the previously carried out by the Social Work Inspection findings of the inspection. Agency and Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Education. The Care Inspectorate inherited a rules-based approach The fear factor to regulation from the Care Commission, which largely consisted of inspecting against prescriptive provider inputs, A consequence of rules-based regulation can be fear of the such as policies, procedures and health and safety. The regulator. While some anxiety about being inspected is a deficit model of regulation involved a quasi-policing of all positive external driver for improvement, fear is a powerful registered services to comply with minimum measures, emotion that can be exacerbated if any element of public many of which were technical in nature. This reflected blame is involved. ELC arouses strong feelings for parents a traditional licensing role, with national inspectorates and the public, particularly when things go wrong, and established to oversee a ‘level playing field’ upon which starting to publish inspection reports online with a quality a free market of public, private and voluntary sector grading scale led to heightened tension. This dynamic was providers could operate under the same framework. For played out within an increasingly risk averse climate across ELC outdoor play was consequently framed in terms the public discourse at that time, fuelled by fear of litigation of black-and-white inputs focussing on safety, with the and press exposure. relevant National Care Standards stating: The above factors created a culture of fear which had its “Children and young people have the opportunity to sleep own momentum, with ELC providers and practitioners or rest and have regular access to fresh air and energetic policing themselves by erring on the side of caution. physical play. Inspectors were finding that services were wrongly assuming that the regulator would not tolerate children “Children and young people have access to taking part in risky activities such as climbing trees, accommodation which is secure and suitable to meet the cooking on real fires or playing with soil or near water. In needs of all users. the same way that fear of touching children swept across the ELC sector to the detriment of children, so myths about “Arrangements are in place to make sure of the safety outdoor play were rapidly gaining ground. and security of children and young people, inside and Given the focus of the old National Care Standards on positively encourage them to develop outdoor play the safety of the environment and the Care Commission’s opportunities that captured children’s curiosity and rules-based approach to regulation, it is perhaps imagination in all weathers. unsurprising that children’s experience of outdoor play in registered ELC settings was becoming unnecessarily The role that the regulator had played in creating a risk- restrictive at that time. However, a deeper dynamic was averse culture was countered by moving to a risk benefit at play than ELC services just playing safe and not risking position and actively dispelling the myths surrounding being caught out by the regulator. Services were also outdoor play. While a written risk assessment may reflecting the wider societal trend to ‘wrap children in cotton be necessary for a particularly dangerous activity, risk wool’. In 2007 two influential books highlighted the danger assessments for everyday activities had become an this presented to children: Sue Palmer’s Toxic Childhood: industry in itself. Staff were spending so much time How The Modern World Is Damaging Our Children And completing paperwork that it either took them away from 3, 4 What We Can Do About It . Gill cited evidence that working directly with children or they decided that it was playing outside presents a far lower risk of harm to children not worth planning the activity in the first place. The Care than often assumed, with injuries from playgrounds being Inspectorate therefore made the following statement on less likely than from many traditional school sports. These risk in play, which was publically endorsed by the Minister popular books have been backed up by a considerable for Children and Young People: body of academic research, which Elizabeth Henderson summarises in Autoethnography in Early Childhood “The Care Inspectorate supports care service providers 5 Education and Care . taking a positive approach to risk in order to achieve the best outcomes for children. This means moving away Helen Tovey from the University of Roehampton, who from a traditional deficit model that takes a risk-averse coined the phrase “safe as necessary not safe as approach, which can unnecessarily restrict children’s possible”, has also been influential in changing attitudes to experiences attending registered services, to a more 6 risk and outdoor play spaces . holistic risk-benefit model. For example, we encourage services to use risk assessment to support children to The risk averse culture limited the experience of all enjoy potentially hazardous activities such as woodwork children experiencing regulated care and particularly using real tools, exploring nature and playing in the mud children and young people under state care. For children and rain. We do not expect written risk assessments to be and young people ‘looked after’ by local authorities, the carried out for daily play activities.” outdoor environment was a heavily rule bound space, as described in the 2007 study Playing It Safe? A study of the Direct engagement with the ELC sector outwith the formal regulation of outdoor play for children and young people in inspection role, through a national roadshow in partnership 7 residential care . with Play Scotland, helped the Care Inspectorate to achieve cultural change and shift from enforcer to enabler. Not only was the fear of children taking risks outdoors to Nature deficit disorder be overcome, but also fear of a ‘big brother’ regulator. The Scottish Government’s commitment to play, with a national 10 At the same time, there was growing recognition of the Play Strategy and its explicit support for a play-based unintended consequences of overprotecting children. learning curriculum for the early years, played an important The impact on individual children was starkly illustrated role in creating a climate where this shift was embraced. by William Bird’s