United Kingdom

Keith A. Cranwell

This entry sets out to identify the significant landmarks that have shaped the development of organized play for the school-aged child in the United Kingdom. The study of the history of play organizations deserves, in its own right, to be recognized as a distinct area of social policy. It informs an understanding of social reform movements that challenged attitudes of the state toward the health, education, and recreational needs of urban working-class children. Working outside the public domain, organizations promoting children's recreation exploited opportunities to extend provision by forming alliances with government and statutory bodies engaged in social work and education that demonstrated the power of private-public partnerships. These partnerships transformed the advocacy for children's play in the 19th century from a loose coalition of social reformers supporting local voluntary projects to the formation, in the 21st century, of representative nationally funded bodies in England, Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales ...

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