Inclusion Disable Children

With disabled children increasingly integrated into mainstream schools, much attention has been paid to their educational needs and their physical needs in and around school buildings. There has been little work on their experiences in the playground, however.

This research reveals some of the ways in which disabled children are included in the wealth of play activities in primary school playgrounds (Ashbaugh 322-326). It identifies organisational, social and physical barriers to their inclusion. It suggests ways of overcoming these, examines examples of good practice and proposes ways of moving forward.

In recent years the trend has been to educate disabled children in mainstream schools, partly as a response to the Special Educational Needs and Disability Act. One of the themes of Every Child Matters is that children should enjoy and achieve, and this applies to the educational context (Richard 56-145). Based on qualitative research focusing on disabled children, this study investigated the play in playgrounds of six schools in Yorkshire. It reveals how disabled children were included in play and identifies both organisational, social and physical barriers and good practice to the inclusion of these children in play at both playtimes and lunch-times.

Disabled children were seen to be involved in many types of play. Their inclusion was often facilitated by themselves, by other children or by staff and sometimes included the adaptation of play.

For the disabled children, play friendship groups ranged from one person to a special friend or a larger sized group, although some played by themselves.

Moving school, which was an issue for some disabled children, could have an impact on the development of friendships and thus inclusion in play.

Organisational barriers included: the existence of individual routines for disabled children that resulted in shortened or no playtime; the treatment of all disabled children in a school as one group rather than as individuals; lack of staff training; and concern about taking risks, which limited play opportunities.

Social barriers sometimes existed because: disabled children spent more time with adults than their peers; staff with responsibility for individual disabled children attracted other children; and staff sometimes did not encourage a disabled child to undertake a form of play they wanted to do and were capable of doing.

Physical barriers, such as ramps and toilets, had been addressed in most school buildings, but no school had systematically audited and acted upon an audit of the playground for inclusive play.

Good practice included individual routines allowing for playtimes, training, valuing and retention of support staff. In addition, some staff were able to encourage confidence in disabled children's play.

Disabled children's inclusion in play

The researchers observed a wide range of play in all six schools involved in the study. This play was identified as play with high verbal content, play with high imaginative content, play with high physical content and less structured play (such as walking, talking, sitting and watching) (Elias et.al. 409-417). Many of the focus children were included across all four categories of play. In some situations focus children were included in play without any adaptations, while ...