Children need to push their boundaries in all directions, so finding the balance between safety and challenge is central to this strand of the outdoors, says Professor Jan White

Settings take a confident and level-headed approach to risk if they adopt an approach which factors in the benefits of risky play.

KEY 11: SAFETY VS CHALLENGE

This area of practice outdoors requires that:

  • health and safety is constantly and carefully monitored and responded to by all staff
  • ‘benefit-risk’ management is used to make experiences available in a sufficiently safe way
  • staff feel comfortable, confident and supported in offering and supporting challenge
  • experiences are routinely used to support children to become risk-competent.

WHY IS THIS ISSUE KEY TO UNLOCKING THE OUTDOORS?

The safety and wellbeing of children is clearly paramount. However, children need challenge and its associated risk if they are to develop well and advance as enthusiastic and competent lifelong learners. As we bounce back from a more risk-averse mentality, we will help ourselves enormously if we reframe risk assessment in play and education settings to ‘benefit-risk management’. Rather than just assessing for risk, we should fully consider the developmental benefits associated with any activity as well.

As at Sandfield Natural Play Centre (see Case study), teams with excellent outdoor provision actively look for opportunities for challenge and assess children’s ideas about the associated risks before embarking on the activity. They value the development of courage, confidence and enjoyment in approaching new experiences, and see the nurturing of ‘risk competence’ as part of their educational role.

Children who can recognise risk, judge their own capabilities and know what to do when things go wrong and can cope with failures are well on the way to becoming confident, resilient and self-assured. Developing this attitude is a slow process. The feeling of finally being able to climb the slippery slope that older children have mastered is a wonderful and formative experience.

As the Play Safety Forum(1) points out, ‘Children would never learn to walk, climb stairs or ride a bicycle unless they were strongly motivated to respond to challenges involving a risk of injury. Disabled children have an equal if not greater need for opportunities to take risks, since they may be denied the freedom of choice enjoyed by their non-disabled peers.’

It also states, ‘If we do not provide controlled opportunities for children to encounter and manage risk then they may be denied the chance to learn these skills. They may also be more likely to choose to play in uncontrolled environments where the risks are greater.’

WHAT DO WE NEED TO BE WORKING ONIN PRACTICE?

Health and safety must be constantly monitored by everyone, overseen by a senior member of staff who is supported by relevant training, with action taken swiftly to address any issues. Everyone has an active part to play in this.

It is important that the setting’s approach is fully shared through induction and training, and maintained by evaluation and supervision, and of course parents need to be well briefed. Good procedural, practical and supervisory support from the senior leadership team will underpin this.

A ‘benefit-risk management’ involves firstly considering the value (or benefits) of an experience for your children, and then establishing a clear rationale for why it should be provided. The following step of carefully thinking through how to make this possible in a sufficiently safe way, rather than limiting experiences, develops a culture of ‘risk management to enable’ that can permeate every aspect of outdoor provision.

Armed with this approach, when children pile milk crates up so as to jump off them, hang by their arms or upside down from branches, or want to lift and transport heavy objects, adults will be positive and enabling. Supported by professional development and discussions with parents and as a whole team, a clear, shared agreement that fits your unique setting will gradually develop. As you keep working on this consistent, positive and supportive approach, you might well find that your own comfort boundaries become challenged and stretched too.

Within this positive approach, experiences can be routinely used to support children themselves to become risk-competent.

Ann Thompson shares an approach that Sandfield Natural Play Centre has fruitfully adopted, which is to ‘invite [children] to join staff carrying out the daily opening checks of the outdoor area, giving lots of time for discussing why the checks are important in a real context. Experienced children soon become able to lead the group in carrying out this task and will remind others how to stay safe during their everyday play.’

As a review by Ofsted in 2006(2) found, children’s awareness and judgment are key elements of a successful risk-management process, actively supporting them to develop risk competence, resilience and a positive attitude to challenge and difficulty.

DEVELOPING PROVISION AND PRACTICE

Things to consider, discuss and evaluate

  • Is challenge (with its associated risk) seen as essential to children’s all-round learning and development?
  • Is safety and health constantly and carefully monitored, and is ‘benefit-risk’ management used to make valuable experiences available and sufficiently safe?
  • Are children enabled to become aware and competent in managing risky things?

Things to explore and read

  • Too Safe For Their Own Good? Helping children learn about risk and life skills by Jennie Lindon (2nd edn., National Children’s Bureau, 2011).
  • ‘Embracing Life with Enthusiasm: Supporting young children to become competent, confident, courageous, and resilient’ by Jan White (https://bit.ly/3CEbqTu).
  • ‘Achieving The Balance: Challenge, risk and safety’ by Helen Tovey in Outdoor Provision in the Early Years edited by Jan White (Sage, 2011).
  • Risky play is the focus of the Autumn 2022 issue of The Outdoor Practitioner, Muddy Faces’ free digital magazine (https://bit.ly/3Ehq0BQ).
  • Risk, Challenge and Adventure in the Early Years: A practical guide to exploring and extending learning outdoors by Kathryn Solly (Routledge, 2015).

Things to do

Read Scaredy Squirrel by Melanie Watt (Happy Cat Books, 2006) at a staff meeting, using it as a prompt to talk about your anxieties and confidence with supporting young children in the outdoors – where are your own comfort boundaries?

Explore what ‘risk competence’ and ‘risk literacy’ mean to you – and why these skills and attitudes should be important in our work in early childhood education, for ourselves as well as for the children.

Ask what each member of your team thinks needs to be in place in order for them to feel comfortable, confident and competent in helping children to make the most of outdoor play to challenge themselves, pushing their boundaries while learning how to keep themselves safe.

Professor Jan White is author of several books on outdoor provision and practice and co-director of the specialist training company Outdoors Thinking

REFERENCES

CASE STUDY: growing children’s risk competence through play outdoors

At Sandfield Natural Play Centre, we develop our children’s safety competence by including them in the process of benefit/risk management in a challenging natural outdoor environment. Risk management is everyone’s responsibility in the moment and children should be included in that.

An example of how we develop awareness of benefits and risks is through our growing areas. We have made a Growing Together large-format book documenting the opportunities that will be available through the seasons. While sharing this book we can introduce ideas or assess children’s understanding of how risks can be managed, such as looking after tools and using them correctly, the reasons for hand washing before meals and the knowledge that some plants are edible and others can be harmful. A particularly successful way we have encouraged meaningful conversation is through small-world play. The children are so engaged when they use the small-world characters to talk about keeping safe in the growing area.

Above all, we treat children as unique individuals with their own sense of what is safe for themselves and others, and consequently, we allow them to develop skills such as climbing trees, riding bikes over undulating terrain or tyre-swing play at their own pace, able to trust their own body awareness and their growing ability to assess risk. Our role is to nurture these skills slowly, to observe and understand each child’s ability to manage risk and to respond to children’s need for support while encouraging independent exploration in a space that is physically and mentally challenging. What others may view as risky becomes a wonderful everyday experience for our capable and competent children.

Ann Thompson is an early years consultant: www.naturallycreative.net; www.sandfieldnaturalplaycentre.co.uk