Evaluation of scaling up the Play Active program for children’s physical activity in Australian early childhood education and care services

The central component of Play Active is an evidence-informed physical activity policy template for early childhood education and care (ECEC) services. Services are supported to implement the policy through implementation support strategies. The Play Active Policy: The policy contains 25 procedures that ECEC service directors select to support their service to achieve nine age-specific physical activity and sedentary behaviour recommendations and two key statements. The recommendations and key statements provide clear guidance on the amount of physical activity and sedentary time, including screen time, children should be engaged in while attending ECEC. For example: - To meet the Australian 24-Hour Movement Guidelines for the Early Years, provide children with at least 180 minutes of physical activity daily, via a variety of physical activities spread throughout the day. - Sedentary screen time for purposes other than learning will not be allowed. Play Active implementation support strategies: The majority of the implementation support will be delivered to ECEC service directors via a dedicated Play Active website involving: (i) Self-assessment of current physical activity procedure implementation; (ii) Tailoring of their Play Active policy based on their self-assessment in step (i); (iii)Professional development ; (iv) Becoming a member; (v) Accessing member benefits and inviting educators to complete Play Active professional development. Member benefits include a printed membership pack containing their Play Active policy, a Resource Guide supporting each of the procedures, prompts and suggestions for action to help with policy implementation, communities of practice, feedback and resources. The implementation support strategies include: • Tailoring of ECEC service Play Active policy (the Play Active website supports services to create a tailored Play Active policy, informed by their current implementation of the 25 policy procedures via self-assessment); • Professional Development (brief online modules through the Play Active website); • Tailored prompts & positive reinforcement (emails and SMS to prompt directors and educators to complete the 5-step (directors) and 3-step (educators) process to join Play Active); • Survey & feedback reports (self-assessments every 12 months to monitor progress and provide feedback - delivered by the Play Active website); • Membership fee to increase buy-in and the real-world relevance of the trial ($200 membership fee for 2 years); • Resources (printed Resource Guide providing information on why each policy procedure is important and how to achieve each procedure); • Community of practice (member only website dashboard, live webinars, Play Active member newsletter, social media to enable sharing of case studies between educators and directors, webinars); • Parent resources (e.g., e-news with tips for active play at home); • Member renewal (after two years, services can renew their membership through the Play Active website for a $100-200 fee and by completing further professional development); • Branding & partnerships (Play Active brand and partnerships to increase reputation, recruitment and retention); • Increase demand - a recruitment strategy providing additional opportunities for new services to register e.g., direct mailout, paid social media advertising); • Co-design (Investigator Advisory Group, Partner Advisory Group & Consumer Advisory Group). The duration of the Play Active intervention is 30 months. All components of the intervention will be available at the start (after ECEC directors complete the 60 minute process on the Play Active website). Dose of implementation support provided (fidelity) will be collected through the Play Active website. Modifications to the implementation support provided will be tracked throughout the trial using the Framework for Reporting Adaptations and Modifications-Expanded (FRAME) and FRAME-IS for implementation support strategies. Process evaluation will include reach (i.e., number of educators and directors registering); adoption (i.e., number of services becoming members); engagement (i.e., website, email and SMS usage analytics and user experience); and acceptability, appropriateness and feasibility – including implementation barriers and facilitators. Process evaluation data collection will include surveys with educators and directors and semi-structured interviews with directors and educators.