Rianne Jansens
PhD Candidate - Early Stage Researcher 5
Rianne joined the P4Play project in January 2021. Her project aims to identify participatory play policy, standards and guidelines, and to develop inclusive approaches in co-creating public playspaces for municipalities.
A first orientation showed that children’s rights to share their view on matters that affect them and given due weight, also called children’s participation, is challenged in its operationalisation. There is a widespread lack of use of child-appropriate approaches, preventing children a voice in decisions on everyday occupations such as play, and lack of representation of some groups of children in local decision-making processes. Municipalities responsible for the play provision in the community, important for all children’s outdoor play and encounters with peers, are struggling to involve children adequately in the (re)designing a playspace. This is despite the fact that the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration, and Youth (DCEDIY gov.ie – Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth (www.gov.ie)) and Hub na nÓg (Homepage – HUB na nÓg (hubnanog.ie) in Ireland are providing a national framework and training. Likewise, children’s rights to play seems not to be fully understood and rather perceived as distracting from other activities while it is fundamental to children’s lives.
Together with DCEDIY, the partner organisation in this project, the project has been outlined in 3 phases: 1) Identifying elements of children’s participation in guidelines on design a public playspace, 2) understanding the barriers and facilitators for using strategies for children’s participation in (re)design of public playspaces, according to municipality staff and according to children and young people involved in the decision-making process, 3) to explore the needs and wishes of seldom heard children, like young children under the age of 8 years and children with disabilities for participation in (re) designing public playspace.
The project aims to contribute to local policy in applying a children’s rights based approach in facilitating children’s participation in local play provision.
Currently Rianne is finalizing the scoping review and preparing data collection of the studies in phase two. Ethical approval has been given by Social Ethical Research Committee of University College Cork and from the Swedish Ethical Review Committee.
The secondment of this P4Play project is with the partner organisation DCEDIY in Ireland and will provide opportunities to learn about policy making and implementation processes, and the development of tools for implementation and evaluation regarding children’s participation. There was the opportunity to take part in a training for a local authority on children’s participation. Rianne has taken part at the Council of Europe meeting on children and young people’s participation in May 2022 CP4EUROPE Mid-term Conference (coe.int) Joining different national work groups which will develop tools for participation for a specific group of underrepresented children and young people in decision-making processes on matters that affect them, will provide knowledge and competences on the application of children’s participation in diverse civil services in Ireland.
Background:
Rianne Jansens was trained as occupational therapist in Belgium. She was supporting children and young people with different (dis)abilities from 0 till 30 years in performing their daily activities, such as communication, self-care, writing and other academic skills and play, in different settings like mainstream and special education schools, in pedagogical centres, in kindergartens, in adults’ day care centres or together with parents in their homes in the Netherlands.
She was teaching in a bachelor occupational therapy programme as well as in interprofessional learning modules in allied health care, educational or engineering programmes at Zuyd University of applied sciences. Since 2013 she was taking part in research projects for children and young people with special needs in the Expertise Centre for Innovative Care and Technology of Zuyd University. From 2014 till 2018 she was chairing work group 2 and co-developing the training school of the LUDI Cost Action, a European network aiming to collect and systemize all existing competences and evidence, to develop new knowledge, tools and methodologies, and disseminating best practices about play for children with disabilities. LUDI | Play for Children with Disabilities (ludi-network.eu)
During the last 20 years she was involved in the development of post-graduate courses for occupational therapists, teachers and allied health care professionals working with children in the Netherlands and Belgium, e.g., specialisation to paediatric occupational therapist, CO-OP approach. She is an associate member of ICAN (International Cognitive Approaches Network ICAN COGNITIVE ORIENTATION TO DAILY OCCUPATIONAL PERFORMANCE APPROACH – Icancoop and active in the Knowledge Translation Committee.
Rianne wanted to learn more about conducting research about relevant topics for children and young people with disability. Therefore, she applied for the P4Play project, a Horizon 2020 Marie Skłodowska-Curie Joint Doctoral Programme on play for children (www.p4play.eu). She is responsible for project 5, examining children’s participation in decision-making especially in municipalities responsible for play provision in communities.
Publications:
Jansens, R., Vinçon, S., Jackson, J., Lynch, H. Pentland, D. Prellwitz, M. (2021, 7th-8th July). P4Play: Researching people, place, policy and practice for play from the lens of occupational science: Examining policy processes to facilitate play [E-poster presentation]. Playful Planet Conference 2021, Birmingham, UK. https://www.playfulplanet.org.uk/play2021 Poster open access at P4PLAY: RESEARCHING PEOPLE, PLACE, POLICY and PRACTICE for PLAY from the LENS of OCCUPATIONAL SCIENCE. Examining policy processes to facilitate play | Zenodo
Jansens, R., Lynch, H., Prellwitz, M. (2021, 8th – 9th October). Enhancing lives through enabling participation: Children as active agents in their communities [E-poster presentation]. Association of Occupational Therapists of Ireland Virtual Conference 2021, Ireland. https://www.aoti.ie/conference-2021 Poster open access at Enhancing lives through enabling participation: Children as active agents in their communities | Zenodo
P4Play, blogpost, September 29, 2021. https://www.p4play.eu/news/blog-posts/like-children-at-a-huge-playground/2021/09/29/
Sjöberg, K. (2021). International doctoral students: “It’s nice that the children play outside despite the cold”. LTU Newsletter, 21 December 2021.
Jansens, R., Lynch, H., Olofsson, A., Prellwitz, M. (2022, May 19-20). Making children’s rights mainstream: Taking children’s participation into account when (re)designing a public play space [presentation]. Child in the City seminar. Cascais, Portugal. Child in the City International Seminar – How to make children’s rights mainstream in local policy planning? Presentation is available via Presentations – Child in the City International Seminar and via Making children’s rights mainstream: Taking children’s participation into account when (re)designing a public play space. | Zenodo
Jansens, R., Lynch, H., Olofsson, A., Prellwitz, M. (2022). The representation of children’s participation in guidelines for designing a public playspace: Protocol for a scoping review and ‘best-fit’ framework synthesis of qualitative evidence. DOI:10.5281/zenodo.6524757 The representation of children’s participation in guidelines for designing a public playspace: Protocol for a scoping review and ‘best-fit’ framework synthesis of qualitative evidence. | Zenodo
Jansens, R., Lynch, H., Olofsson, A., Prellwitz, M. (August 18-20, 2022). The occupation of citizenship: exploring children’s participation in public playspace planning [presentation]. World Occupational Science Conference. Vancouver, Canada. Home – Inaugural World Occupational Science Conference (ubc.ca). Presentation is available via The occupation of citizenship: Exploring children’s participation in public playspace planning. | Zenodo
Jansens, R., Lynch, H., Olofsson, A., Prellwitz, M. (will take place in 2022, October 5-7). Connecting children’s right to participation to play policies: Reviewing if and how this right is represented in guidelines for designing public playspaces. [presentation]. Child in the City World Conference. Dublin, Ireland. Child in the City World Conference 2022 – 5-7 October 2022 Dublin, Ireland
Videoclip ESR 5, posted on Twitter on February 15th, 2022
https://www.dropbox.com/s/9bjcn6knryxsttm/P4Play_ESR5_RJ_%20videoclip%20dd%20Jan%202022.mov?dl=0
Non published content:
Jansens, R. (2021, March 24). Enhancing children’s right to be heard in (re)designing public playspaces [E-presentation]. Local Authority Park and Recreation Network, Ireland.
Jansens, R. (2022, March 7). Enhancing children’s right to be heard in (re)designing public playspaces [E-presentation]. DCEDIY work group Children’s participation methodologies in Early Years.
Jansens, R. (2022, March 16). Enhancing children’s right to be heard in (re)designing public playspaces [E-presentation]. DCEDIY work group Consultation with Children with disabilities.
