Community recreation provisions that support low-income families’ access to recreation

Abstract

ABSTRACT Families living in poverty face several constraints gaining access to support and resources needed to participate in recreation and leisure activities. Community recreation providers have an important role to play, often utilizing fee assistant programs (FAPs), or low or no cost programming as key strategies. These financial focused strategies, however, only address some of the challenges with which low-income families are confronted. The literature has reported a number of other constraints, such as discrimination, stigmatizing policy processes, limited leisure resource knowledge, and poor treatment from recreation staff that hinder low-income families’ recreation and leisure participation. The purpose of this paper is to describe four key pillars of a community recreation organization’s provisions, which specifically support low-income families’ access to recreation. Drawing on data from a six-year case study, these findings indicated that outreach, social capital, freedom to choose, and leisure education were key pillars that supported low-income families’ recreation and leisure participation.