Play in Healthcare: Gift or Strategy?
Examining the Provision of Play in Healthcare Settings Through the Lens of Gift Theory
Abstract
The evidence for play as a key component of child development is well established and play scholarship has had reverberations in all aspects of children's lives. This paper asks whether increased awareness and acknowledgement of play's multiple benefits for children's learning, health, and overall development have led to its instrumentalization as a strategy for change, and in so doing appropriated a unique gift of childhood. It examines whether gift theory can enhance our understanding of the play expereience, specifically in relation to play in the healthcare settings. Draeing on their experience as Health Play Specialists in the UK and in Japan, the authors propose that when the provision of play in hospitals and other healthcare settings can be framed as a gift exchange, the integrity of the play experience is preserved, but that this is conditional on the giver's consciousness and the quality of the relationship between the player and the provider of the play.
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