Using play to help families learn: evaluation of Trafford Hall’s Playing 2 Learn programme 2008-11

The report describes the results of a three-year evaluation by LSE Housing and Communities of a family learning programme called Playing 2 Learn. The Playing 2 Learn programme was open to vulnerable families from low income communities across England. It was delivered by a charity, Trafford Hall, home of the National Communities Resource Centre between 2008 and 2011. It consisted of 26 residential weekend events with 795 adult and child family members from a total of 205 families attending. The weekends used creative, low cost play activities to promote play-based learning. The evaluation used baseline data collected by the programme, self-reported short-, medium- and longer-term outcomes based on written feedback from 62% of participating families, in-depth interviews with the purposive sample of 20 families, assessments from referral agencies, interviews with delivery staff, and observations of the residential events. It finds that the families participating in the programme experienced a series of pressures that undermined their ability to engage positively and spend time with their children at home, including family breakdown and formation, pressures of lowincomes, health and behavioural issues. Outcomes for families from the programme were assessed under four themes. First, there was improved family interaction over the short-, medium- and longer-terms, for example reading together and doing messy play. Second, parents’ and carers’ attitudes towards and input into children’s opportunities for play were also improved, including getting new ideas for affordable play activities and continuing to use them up to two years after attending the weekends. To the extent that the evaluation was able to measure, the impacts on younger children’s ability to learn were much more limited. Fourthly, there were positive impacts on parents’ and carers’ participation in the community for around a quarter of respondents, and wider impacts on parents’ and carers’ self-esteem and confidence, primarily through the support of meeting other families in similar situations. The report concludes that the value of the residential setting was to help families to experience new challenges. The experiential hands-on approach helped to generate long-lasting impacts. Many of the families on the programme were going through tough times that play alone could not resolve. The Programme succeeded in its goals to be a ‘snapshot removed from the everyday’, on which families could draw for inspiration when they return to their often challenging daily lives

Reflections on Foucauldian Discource Analysis in Planning and Environmental Research

YesDiscourse analysis is becoming an increasingly common approach in planning and environmental policy research. This paper asserts that the generic treatment of discourse analysis obscures distinct approaches where `discourses¿ can combine different elements of text, systems of thought, and action. Textually-oriented approaches have been more prevalent over the 1990s but this paper explores a different approach, grounded in the theory of Michel Foucault, which broadens discourse to embrace social action. Comparing and contrasting two studies which have utilised this approach, the paper suggests that there is considerable room for variation concerning the subjects of study, the institutional scale of analyses, the methods of investigation, and process of analysis. Nevertheless, this paper identifies certain core elements of a Foucauldian discourse analytic approach. The paper concludes that this emerging approach to discourse analysis promises considerable insights if applied more widely in planning and environmental research

Building the Big Society

Papers are a contribution to the debate and set out the authors ’ views only Localism and the Big Societ

Outsider and Insider Expertise: The response of residents of deprived neighbourhoods to an academic definition of social exclusion

The aim of this paper is to compare academic interpretations of the term social exclusion with the understanding of people with direct experience of the phenomenon. A pre-selected group of residents of deprived neighbourhoods were asked about various aspects of the concept and their responses compared with the definitions of social exclusion used by Burchardt, Le Grand and Piachaud in their 1999 article in the journal Social Policy and Administration. In general, the residents' understanding of the term corresponded well with the more academic definitions; however, in one or two key areas there were significant differences, for example, the importance of neighbourhood and 'service poverty', and the need for action against aspects of social exclusion on the grounds of social justice. This confirms that it might be useful for more academic concepts to be tested against the views of those with experience of the phenomenon which the concept is trying to capture.definitions of social exclusion, community involvement, neighbourhood renewal

Towards the ‘Big Society’: What role for neighbourhood working? Evidence from a comparative European study

Under the New Labour government, the neighbourhood emerged prominently as a site for policy interventions and as a space for civic activity, resulting in the widespread establishment of neighbourhood-level structures for decision-making and service delivery. The future existence and utility of these arrangements is now unclear under the Coalition government's Big Society proposals and fiscal austerity measures. On the one hand, sub-local governance structures might be seen as promoting central-to-local and local-to-community devolution of decision-making. On the other, they might be seen as layers of expensive bureaucracy standing in the way of bottom-up community action. Arguably the current value and future role of these structures in facilitating the Big Society will depend on how they are constituted and with what purpose. There are many local variations. In this paper we look at three case studies, in England, France and the Netherlands, to learn how different approaches to neighbourhood working have facilitated and constrained civic participation and action. Drawing on the work of Lowndes and Sullivan (2008) we show how the achievement of civic objectives can be hampered in structures set up primarily to achieve social, economic and political goals, partly because of (remediable) flaws in civic engagement but partly because of the inherent tensions between these objectives in relation to issues of spatial scale and the constitution and function of neighbourhood structures. The purpose of neighbourhood structures needs to be clearly thought through. We also note a distinction between 'invited' and 'popular' spaces for citizen involvement, the latter being created by citizens themselves. 'Invited' spaces have tended to dominate to date, and the Coalition's agenda suggests a fundamental shift to 'popular' spaces. However we conclude that the Big Society will require neighbourhood working to be both invited and popular. Citizen participation cannot always replace local government - sometimes it requires its support and stimulation. The challenge for local authorities is to reconstitute 'invited' spaces (not to abolish them) and at the same time to facilitate 'popular' spaces for neighbourhood working.Big Society, local government, neighbourhood, neighbourhood management, community