The third difference is that traditional playwork focusses on the type of play which is usually described as ‘free play’, and the need for children to have this form of play in their lives and for adults to leave children to play in their own way. PARS has a broader aim, which goes back to the

original philosophy of the adventure playground pioneers, who saw play not as an aim, but an outcome. The adventure playground pioneers

recognised that play was an important part of children’s culture – a culture which was very different from the dominant adult culture. The

adventure playground pioneers felt that children were deprived not just of play, but of their childhoods by an adult world which prioritised

adult needs and perspectives at the expense of children’s needs and perspectives. The PARS model is based on that founding philosophy of the adventure playground pioneers – not children’s right to

play, but children’s right to be children, with all the ‘quirks’ and bafflements that that may involve from an adult perspective! PARS practitioners work with those divergences where the child andadult worlds meet (and often collide!), rather than going in with their own adult agendas of ‘learning’, or ‘development’, or even ‘play’. PARS playwork is therefore ‘pro-child’ (as John Bertelsen, the first playworker put it), rather than ‘pro-play’, and PARS practitioners respect and protect time and space for childhood, rather than just play.