Policy

These tools are for a health service that is kinder and gentler to children

Starlight and NHS England have launched the Play Well Toolkit

Today’s launch of a new NHS toolkit for children’s play in healthcare is unlikely to make the evening news or to start trending on social media.

But for people concerned about the mental health and wellbeing of children in hospitals and hospices, and how we can minimise the distress and anxiety that can all too often accompany their treatment, today is a real milestone.

  1. Guidelines for commissioning and designing health play services.
    This makes it clear to NHS leaders that therapeutic play and health play services should be an integral part of all children’s healthcare.
  2. Recommended standards for health play services
    Fully complementary with the professional standards for individual health play specialists, this defines good practice for health play services through seven recommended standards and how they should be met.
  3. Quality checklist for health play services
    This is a practical tool for healthcare managers, designed to enable them to monitor their play services and identify priorities for improvement.

Although therapeutic play has long been recognised in health policy, there has never before been official descriptions and measures of what good looks like for health play services, or quality improvement tools that can be used by NHS managers and decision makers. We believe these are a key to securing the funding, resources, recognition and support for children’s play in healthcare that is so badly needed.

Most importantly, the toolkit launched this week should be an important step, in the words of Cathy Gilman, our CEO, and the NHS’s Chief Nurse, Duncan Barton, towards making “the NHS as welcoming, gentle, and child-friendly as possible”.