In its early years HPA focused on developing holiday play schemes and had helped communities and groups set up over twenty-four projects by the early eighties. The association then "mapped the gaps" in borough-wide provision and created projects to fill them. As each project became viable it was floated off as an autonomous organisation, with its own management and charitable status. Successful examples are still in operation, over 20 years later.
In the late eighties, as the GLC and ILEA were abolished and funding structures changed, HPA concentrated on persuading the council to maintain funding for existing play and child-care providers. As a result, the council committed to 1 million pounds worth of direct and grant-aid funding to projects in Hackney, securing over thirty holiday play schemes, seventeen school-based play centres, six adventure playgrounds and six other projects.
The next five years - Consolidating play provision
In the nineties, as HPA developed new projects once more, Play on Estates was set up as a mobile project working on four large estates, funded by the Urban Programme and specifically aimed at Turkish, Kurdish, Somali and Bengali and other refugee and displaced communities living in emergency or short-term housing on the estates, and helping them to integrate with the majority communities. Our research showed that the target communities were reluctant to use play facilities unless play workers from their cultures were employed, but we couldn"t recruit experienced play workers from these communities because of a lack of training and experience.
We responded by setting up a three-year New Communities Training Project, funded by BT in the Community and a variety of other funders, to provide year-long full-time training courses linked to the newly developed NVQ in Play & Play work, with substantial placements on existing play projects. Our monitoring of the placements showed that there was a need for in-service training for existing play workers, and for infrastructure support to improve the physical environment in many play sites.
Again, monitoring revealed a wider need for in-service training in play work practice and additionally for infrastructure support, to improve physical play-site environments. As a result, in 1996, HPA set up in-service training to NVQ Levels 2 & 3 in Play and Play work alongside associated training, such as Health and Safety, First Aid, Child Protection and Design & Build.
In the late nineties, as HPA"s Training Unit forged ahead in service delivery and development, HPA continued to campaign and lobby for play provision and improved standards, both in the borough, across London and the UK. After the Torkildsen Report of 1996, HPA became a lead member on a steering group created to support out-of-school play services for children across London. The result was the establishment of London Play, which works today to co-ordinate support and assist in the development of play across the capital.
The "missing link" in play provision in London and elsewhere in the late nineties was the concept of quality standards. In 1998 we began work on creating the country"s first play-specific quality assurance system, and in early 2000 Focus Central London TEC funded London Play, who in turn contracted HPA to develop the system through a series of pilot workshops and seminars across six London boroughs. Quality in Play has now been published by London Play with a preface by Chris Smith MP, Secretary of State for Culture Media and Sport, and will be part of the Investors in Children quality benchmarking programme recently announced by the Prime Minister.
In 2000/2001 we took a look at ourselves as an organisation to see whether we were practising what we preached, and as a first step we started the process of achieving Investors in People status through a programme funded by Focus Central London TEC and now by the successor East London Learning and Skills Council.
In August 2002 Hackney entered into a ten year contract with the Learning Trust, where the Early Years and Play Service are. HPA works closely with the section to improve not only the quality of Play Provision within the borough, but to ensure that training is available to staff of the Trust.
Partnerships are being forged at the moment with the onset of the new Children Act 2004 - "Every Child Matters".
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