Unless more suitable outdoor play opportunities are provided for children and young people, a physical and mental illness time bomb is likely to explode, an international conference in Bristol was told.
"As councils cut their spending on outdoor spaces and society encourages physical idleness, obesity is becoming an epidemic. Young people now face heart problems, diabetes and other diseases because of their sedentary lifestyles. This puts them at risk of premature death and confronts the NHS with a rocketing bill," said Professor Lamine Mahdjoubi, from the University of the West of England, who chaired the conference.
Children are denied the opportunities for playing out of doors that previous generations took for granted. Delegates heard moving testimony from four mothers from Glasgow who contrasted their experiences of playing in the street with the restrictions placed on children in the city today.
"The streets are unrecognisable from our youth," said Marie Forsyth, of the parents' group To play or not to play. "Now, they are full of traffic, and play spaces are desolate and scarred by drug-taking. We were poor but at least we had a childhood."
Surveys of children and young people reveal they are increasingly dissatisfied with their outdoor environments and many of them would prefer to spend time in healthy activities, if only more were available. Fears about health, safety and litigation have resulted in councils trying to minimise the risks of public spaces, leading to unchallenging playgrounds that do not appeal to young people.
However, now is the time to act, with improving urban spaces and tackling childhood obesity increasingly on the government agenda. Delegates at the conference – which brought together parents' lobbying groups and experts on planning policy, safety, transport, health, food and physical activity, and the psychological impacts on children unable to socialise out of doors - shared views on overcoming barriers to outdoor play. They identified the need to assess the socio-cultural as well as physical benefits of outdoor play; the need to measure the way our environment encourages idleness; and found that design can be used to encourage a diversity of activities.