Playground Safety

What You Can Do

Source

Scott Burton, President
Safety Play, Inc.

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Parental Supervision Advised

Playground safety has become an increasingly important issue in the past several years. This is the first in a series of articles on playground safety. The specific subjects of each article will change, but the main point remains the same, that is, to keep our children from becoming injured or killed while they are simply trying to play on playground equipment. The content of this and future articles will interest all who are concerned about children's safety.

This series of articles begins with supervision for a reason.

• Lack of it constitutes the majority, approximately 44%, of the reason for all injuries on the playground.
• Falls constitute 75% of all types of injuries. However, we want to first address how to prevent the fall from happening in the first place.

Of course, the remaining types of injuries will be addressed by all of the upcoming articles as well.

Children can become bored with playing on equipment as it was intended to be used. They get "creative" and use it in hazardous ways (unknown to them). They see this as fun. Supervision is not intended as a guarantee to prevent injuries. But when a child turns a known risk (sliding down a slide) into a hazardous situation (climbing up the slide), supervision should come into play.

Supervision and behavior go hand in hand, but behavior will be the content of the next article.

What Can You Do?

• The best piece of advice? BE THERE. I just returned from auditing playgrounds for some cities in California, but at one park there were three little children playing by themselves, unsupervised. I asked where their parents were, and they said "At home". What if one of them became injured so badly that, had the parents simply been there, the action taken by the parent (call 911, etc.) could have prevented either the injury or a death? I told them to get their folks so they can play safely and supervised.
  
  
• Being on the premises is not all it takes either. A mother in Illinois placed her 1-1/2 year old daughter on a slide that was 8 feet high. She then sat at a picnic table about 75 feet away to talk to her friend. Needless to say, the child fell off the top of the slide onto the surface below and became paralyzed. Now, the mother had a "duty of care" to stay with her infant and use common sense to protect her...by being there! Let's clarify something. This doesn't mean that you have to act like a net underneath the kids as they play on all of the pieces of equipment, ready to catch them. But if you are there to supervise them, tell them how to use the equipment properly, and yes, maybe even catch them as they fall down, then you will exercise good parenting supervision.
  
  
• Many aspects to good supervision are not in your control. For instance, is the park bench at the playground pointing away from the equipment? You can't supervise very well if you are not able to see the kids and you must sit down, or assist one of them on the bench. Is the bench near water? If so, you want to be able to see that way to be sure that a child has not wandered too close to the shoreline. Does the park offer supervised activities in their curriculum? Not all parks do, but for the ones that do offer it, if your child is a participant enrolled in that activity, then that staff member has a duty to provide supervision for your child while in their care.
  
  
• Day care providers have specific ratios that they must adhere to in order to provide the minimum amount of supervision for your child while in their care. Those ratios are usually the same whether the children are indoors or outdoors.

Part of supervision is knowing what to look out for.

1. Do not allow kids to play on equipment that is broken, damaged, wet, or covered with sand or gravel (to prevent slipping), or when it is roped off or closed off. Too many parents lift their kids over barricades to gain access to equipment in order to play without thinking about why it is closed off.

2. One of the most important things to look for is that the playground has sufficient surfacing to absorb impact from falls. We will get into more detail on that in a future article.

So, if parents could try to do some of the things mentioned here, it sure would make the world just a little bit better, wouldn't it? Especially for the kids! See you in the next edition of KidSource Online.

Credits

Scott Burton is the President of Safety Play, Inc., and is a Certified Playground Safety Inspector (CPSI). He has designed, manufactured, audited and inspected thousands of different types of areas and equipment. He was a former owner of a Florida company which was responsible for planning, design, writing specifications, purchasing, manufacturing & installation supervision, determining surfacing specifications, and providing worldwide sales of playground equipment.

He is currently involved with the creation of the International Playground Standards, and is a feature author for KidSource OnLine. He can be contacted via:

Scott Burton, President
Safety Play, Inc.
Specialists in Recreational Safety
http://www.mindspring.com/~safetyplay
#295 - 10460 Roosevelt Blvd.
St. Petersburg, Fl., U.S., 33716
(727)-522-0061 (Phone & Fax)