By Jessica McCann
Spending time with a child—whether you’re building blocks, playing pretend, or simply running around outside—is more than just fun. As famously stated by Fred Rogers, “play is really the work of childhood.” Play benefits children and caregivers, reducing stress for both and fostering cognitive, socioemotional, and physical development in young children. Primary care visits offer providers an opportunity to promote play to caregivers in the clinical setting. To facilitate these interactions, the Prescription for Play (P4P) program distributes free LEGO® DUPLO® brick kits and educational materials to pediatric healthcare providers.
The Weitzman Institute, a research, education, and policy organization, with support from The LEGO Foundation, brings P4P to clinics and caregivers across the United States. One pillar of the Weitzman Institute is our commitment to bringing patient and community perspectives to local, state and national policy discussions. Increasingly, stakeholders are calling for these perspectives–and in some cases mandating them–in order to shape policies that accurately reflect the needs of populations served. Therefore, to better understand caregiver perspectives on play in their families and communities and inform broader recommendations to policymakers, providers, and caregivers, P4P convened a caregiver advisory group in the fall of 2024. In just a few short months, the P4P team recruited diverse caregivers, convened two advisory group meetings, produced a policy brief, and incorporated caregiver input into the final document. In this blog, we briefly describe the recruitment and structure of the group and outline resulting recommendations. For the full story, read the policy brief: Caregiver Experiences with Play: Recommendations for Providers, Policymakers, and Caregivers to Promote Child Well-Being and Reduce Family Stress.
Recruitment and Structure
To form the caregiver advisory group, we distributed recruitment materials to P4P-participating primary care providers and clinic offices in June 2024, requesting they share the materials with parents of young children. We invited 11 applicants to join the group, ensuring members represented a wide variety of income levels, geographic regions, family structures, and racial, ethnic, and other identities.
The two advisory group meetings took place in August and September 2024 via Zoom, with 10 and 11 members from across the United States participating, respectively. In the first meeting, our team asked caregivers about their experiences receiving the P4P kit and thoughts on play as it relates to well-child visits. In the second meeting, caregivers discussed play in their own homes and communities. Both sessions elicited feedback relevant to current policy discussions, including concerns surrounding caregiver stress, screens, and barriers to playtime.
Findings and Recommendations
Using this feedback, we categorized input as pertaining to providers (e.g., primary care physicians, pediatricians, nurses, office staff), policymakers, and caretakers of young children. With the help of our advisory group, we derived recommendations for each category.
These recommendations include the following:
- Providers should discuss the importance of play during visits; make offices more play-friendly; offer age-specific ideas on play in after-visit summaries; and refer stressed caregivers to appropriate resources.
- Public policies should incorporate caregiver voices; leverage the primary care setting to help caregivers build and maintain safe, stable, and nurturing relationships; support programs like parental leave and accessible childcare to help caregivers balance play and caretaking with work and life responsibilities; and champion high quality, culturally-relevant, affordable health care.
- Caregivers should be mindful of screen time for themselves and their young children; be creative with play when time or materials are short; seek local parenting groups and support; and advocate for more play and safe play spaces in schools and communities.
Future Directions
We will expand our work with caregivers over the next few years to guide future P4P programmatic developments, better understand the role of play across cultures and communities, and continue to answer the call to include lived experiences in policy making and program planning. Read the full brief, Caregiver Experiences with Play: Recommendations for Providers, Policymakers, and Caregivers to Promote Child Well-Being and Reduce Family Stress, for detailed recommendations, caregiver demographic data and more.
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If you’re interested in joining the P4P 2025 Caregiver Advisory Group, let us know! Complete this short form and we’ll be in touch in the coming weeks with more information.