The Playpen Cafe CIC

The Playpen Cafe CIC The Playpen operates as a Community Interest Company. The Playpen also runs a support for the elderly service Lunch Club at Home.

This means we are a social enterprise that re-invests all our profits into delivering services for the communities we work with and support. Our social aims are to support young children’s social and cognitive development through imaginative play, and to support parental mental health and wellbeing. We do this by creating a more parent-friendly children’s play centre where you can benefit from pee

r support in a modern and comfortable setting, and importantly where you can access our Mothership Programme of parental support classes and events. We are currently funded by a variety of Scottish Government funds, the National Lottery and the Scottish Social Entrepreneur’s Programme, in partnership with Bank of Scotland. This support is wonderful recognition of our aims to support parents and carer’s in the community, as well as the children they care for. We run pop-up play cafes in Clackmannanshire and Perth & Kinross, using community spaces to create amazing play environment for children and a welcoming social hub for caregivers that caters to all their needs. Visit our page for more info!

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The Playpen’s Story

The concept behind The Playpen Café began in 2017 when founding director Alexandra Ostroumoff-Croucher identified the need for more children’s indoor play facilities that catered to the needs of the carer as well as the child. With plenty of soft play centres to choose from in Scotland’s main cities, there were lots of options for energetic children’s free play in jungle gym environments. However, these venues don’t typically cater for or appeal to carers as a place to spend time in, and there were limited or no such facilities in smaller towns and rural areas. Alexandra noticed the fledgling growth in the play café concept – an environment that encourages role-play, imagination and developing children’s social and cognitive skills. Importantly, for carers, this concept also looks to include facilities that appeal to adults – quality fresh coffee, modern and healthy menus with tasty treats baked on-site, an appealing and well designed environment where a carer can see their child at play while being able to relax and meet with friends.

The Playpen Café was born in December 2017 when we began to test out our ideas, running pop up events in Clackmannanshire and Perth and Kinross. Our pop-up team worked hard to revamp and decorate village community halls, turning them into modern and fun play cafes with a huge variety of toys and play experiences for the kids in a gated and secure environment, while also bringing in trained baristas and catering staff to offer a real café experience where carers could relax, meet friends and access peer support so vital in their role. Our offering included a dedicated Playmaker whose role was to support carers by playing with the children.

The need to provide this welcoming and supportive hub for caregivers became so clear very early on and we quickly saw an opportunity to take our concept one step further by offering a gateway to accessing mental health and wellbeing support services. We know how hard it is caring for young children. While so rewarding, it also has many challenges and mental health concerns can easily become an issue for many carers. This can begin during pregnancy but can last well after the birth of the baby and can remain a constant battle for some mums and dads as they balance the role of caregiver with the multiple stresses and challenges of daily life. The Playpen acts as a soft gateway to getting help, devoid of the stigma often associated with paternal mental health concerns. Putting your hand up and saying, “I need help”, knowing where to look for help, or being confident enough to approach a GP can all be quite daunting. The Playpen brings the support available locally in-house via our programme of support and information events. We create a safe, welcoming and non-judgemental place where mums, dads, grandparents, childminders and carers in all shapes and sizes can feel at home and get the help they need – whether that just a cuppa and a cake or attending one of our support events.