Evaluation Positivity, Leadership and Activated Youth (PLAY) Subject: PSY30011 - Psychology of Wellbeing Student Number: 101778382 Date: 17 February 2021 Word Count: 1152 ---
Positivity, Leadership and Activated Youth (PLAY) is a program designed to increase or enhance the wellbeing and resilience of young people and is used in Australian schools. The program is offered through Resilient Youth Australia and is an adaptation of a program in the UK called Play at Lunchtimes (PAL's) which was delivered in schools and developed by Andrew Delaney. At the start of the program there is a full day of training, which is done at the school and is designed for student leaders. In the first part of the training, students are introduced to the program and they are taught all the skills and games they need to know so they can run the PLAY program themselves and lead their peers. It shows students what they have to offer as leaders and helps them recognise their leadership skills through strength-based approaches. The second part of the training sees the student leaders put their skills into practice and facilitates the games they learnt during the first session with a younger group of their peers. This is done under supervision and the student leaders have the trainers there for guidance and support. Once the training day is finished, the outcome of the program is that student leaders now have the ability and hopefully the confidence to continue with the PLAY program and keep running it to younger students and their peers at lunch with teacher supervision. Both student leaders and the students participating benefit from the PLAY program according to Resilient Youth Australia, the student leaders by strengthening their empowerment and increasing their responsibility, and the participating students through being given a sense of belonging, learning the importance of positive values. The PLAY program also helps to decrease bullying. Seligman & Csikszentmihalyi (2000) outline some of the key concepts of positive psychology as the focus on the positive events and experiences in a person's life, including building individuals' strengths and positive traits. Because the PLAY program uses a strength-
based approach to its training and the intended outcomes focus on building resilience - which is a positive trait in a person - in students it is a perfect fit for positive psychology. Playtime has always been a part of human culture (Sandberg and Heden, 2011) and the experiences children of all ages get from playtime is essential, it is a source of physical activity in a time where children are being drawn inside through alternatives to PA like TV and other forms of screens (Barton, Sandercock, Pretty and Wood, 2014), and it is also crucial for cognitive development, the development of social skills and academic achievement (Mulryan- Kyne, 2014). According to Milteer & Ginsburg (2012) when children learn through play it helps them learn group skills, teaches them to share and how to resolve conflict, as well as helping them build and develop relationships. Some obstacles