With real concerns about the current health, wellbeing and physical activity outcomes for children and young people, the Sport and Recreation Alliance has launched Why are we failing our children?

We conducted research to reflect how the existing sport and recreation system for children and young people has operated in the recent political landscape and have concluded that:

1. The system is excessively complex, and lacks a clear, common purpose;
2. Varying definitions of children and young people creates confusion around audience;
3. There is a real lack of accountability across the system;
4. We do not consider international best practice or transferable learnings enough.

We have made one primary recommendation for action as a result - we must establish the fundamental right of a child to be active - and beneath this, we have also identified a series of further actions that must be taken by the Alliance, the sector and government.

We are determined to ask the difficult questions necessary to create meaningful change, and must all take urgent action now to make sure that we don't continue to fail our children.

This research is the first step in our long-term campaign around children and young people #RightToBeActive. In the coming week we'll also be launching a petition to guarantee that all children have the fundamental right to be physically active.