During the summer of 2019, Motherhood Diaries joined forces with The Association of Play Industries (API) to promote their #PlayMustStay campaign which highlighted the need to get children outdoors and playing in their parks and playgrounds. They explored how less screen time and more time spent on playgrounds positively impacted not only my boys’ lives but our entire family. They saw a dramatic difference in their health and wellbeing – they were happier, easier to handle and they slept better. During the research into this campaign to urge the government to invest more money in our parks and playgrounds, we learnt how much outdoor play facilities benefit kids’ lives.

When API researched into the state of England’s parks and playgrounds back in 2016, they discovered that the government had closed 374 playgrounds across England since 2014 and they will continue to decrease their spend on play facilities by almost half (44%) by 2020/21 – that equates to around £25 million!

ESP Play Parks – Amazing Outdoor Play Spaces

ESP Play Parks specialise in Design, Manufacture and Installation of outdoor playgrounds both in public, private and educational settings. Our in-house design team have over 15 years’ experience in designing innovative and challenging playgrounds that are designed to enhance children’s experiences.

· Improve communication with each other
· Improve physical fitness, Balance and Co-ordination.
· Improved concentration from being active

API commissioned Mumsnet to create a survey of 1,111 parents with kids between two and twelve years old to find out how these closures and a decrease in spend impacted parents in the UK. They found that almost half (48%) of parents found it difficult to persuade their child to leave the screen (60% with kids aged 10-12 years old) and realised that the closure of outdoor play facilities were pulling kids indoors and onto the screens, thus leading to an epidemic of mental health issues, obesity and sleep problems. Over half the parents surveyed said their child would be more active if they had more access to outdoor play facilities and a whopping 90% of those with no access to a local playground said that a local park would make their child play outside more. So, it is clear as day that parks and playgrounds are lacking and we must urge the government to increase their spend, so all children have a play facility where they could burn their energy – and grow as a human!