Excerpts from the summary report:
Play for a change, completed in October 2007, illustrates substantial and wide-ranging evidence of the importance of play in the lives of children. Despite this, discussion of play has been consistently undervalued in public policy for children, which tends to focus on children's development into adulthood while overlooking the importance of the physical, social, cultural and emotional worlds that children both inhabit and create in their daily lives. Since the completion of this review, the Government has published The Children's Plan (DCSF 2007) and Fair Play, a draft national play strategy (DCFS 2008). These recent and much-welcomed initiatives offer the potential to redress this situation through acknowledging that play is fundamental to children's enjoyment of their everyday lives.