Executive Summary
When children participate in sports and the arts, they quickly gain skills and enrich the quality of their lives. Joining a club or team provides an opportunity for children to learn how to interact with their peers and adults. Involvement in these activities thus protects children from having emotional and social problems.
But the fact is that large groups of children, aged 6 to 11, are not participating in these activities. Moreover, the children who need these programs are the least likely to get them. The results emphasize that sizeable groups of Canadian children are virtually excluded from participation in sports, the arts and community programs. This is particularly striking for the arts and community programs where over two-thirds of children, 6 to 8 years of age, were reported to have "almost never" participated in programs in the past year. For the older children, 9 to 11 years of age, over 60 percent "almost never" participated in the last year. In unsupervised sports the rates of poor participation were lower with one in six of the younger children, and one in seven of the older children, "almost never" having participated in the past twelve months.
Gender, income and community facilities were three strong determinants of not participating in activities. Girls were more likely than boys to participate in arts-oriented activities while boys were more likely to participate in sports. Children from low income families were the least likely to participate in sports, arts and community programs. These children were excluded from supervised sports in particular. In the community domain, as would be expected, the presence of good parks, playgrounds and play spaces in the neighbourhood was strongly associated with increased rates of participation in supervised sports, and to a less extent, in unsupervised sports and the arts.
The authors conclude that targeted programs are required to reach subgroups of children with particularly low participation rates, for example, poor children. In the latter case, it could be argued that any new community government initiative in sports, arts and community programs should be judged in part by its ability to attract high-risk children, such as children from poor families.
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