Selecting a Child Care Facility With a Safe Playground

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Scott Burton, President
Safety Play, Inc.

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There are many options to choose from when selecting child care--a large facility, a small one, a family home situation, or grandma's house, among others. There is a lot that goes into the decision, yet one thing that can get overlooked is ensuring the playground area is made as safe as possible. Please consider the following information when going through the child care selection process.

Major Fallacies Unveiled

According to state laws, it is the duty of the government (HRS, Department of Family and Children Services, etc.) to evaluate the playground at each licensed child care facility. This gives an enormous level of comfort to the facility owners as well as the parents of those children attending, knowing that the playground is safe. These inspections are sincerely performed with the utmost concern toward safety. No one would allow a playground to remain open to children if they knew it had serious, or any, hazards. The problem is knowing about the hazards.

It has been my experience that these inspections check for the following:

• wood splintering
• proper surfacing being used
• proper fencing
• playground looks "safe"

The above inspection is just a fraction of what needs to be done to prevent injuries.

What the Child Care Facility Should Do

Ideally, each playground should be audited by a Certified Playground Safety Inspector (CPSI) in order to identify all of the inherent hazards. An audit is a microscopic view of the entire playground, as opposed to an inspection. An audit by a CPSI will check for the following:

• Design and layout of equipment and site
• Head and neck entrapment hazards (detects strangulation gaps)
• Protrusions (detects impact hazards to the eye socket, temple, and internal organs)
• Entanglements (detects other strangulation gaps and projections)
• Sharp points and edges
• Stability (detects tip-over and other hazards)
• Pinch/crush/shear points
• Surfacing depth (detects impact absorption to prevent head concussions)
• Use Zone (so there is enough of a "fall zone")
• Traffic flow
• Signage
• General hazards (overhead hazards, fencing, suspended hazards, tripping hazards, maintenance, drainage, and much more)

The audit is performed once. After completion of a CPSI audit, a regularly scheduled "routine maintenance inspection" should check for broken hardware, lack of surfacing, trip hazards, and many more things that people do not realize to check for. The "routine maintenance inspections" should keep the playground at a level of safety that was achieved after the audit.

Buying and installing brand-new equipment does not always provide assurance that the playground is safe. I have audited brand new equipment countless times, and each time I find a Class 1 (life threatening) hazard. Why? Because it was either made wrong, installed incorrectly, or the supplier does not have a good understanding of the rules. It is quite unfortunate, but let me reiterate that the suppliers and owner/operators have the best intentions. It is not their goal to have unsafe playgrounds.

What Parents Should Do

Ask the child care facility for a copy of a Certificate of Compliance from a third party CPSI. Even then it is not a guarantee--loose surfacing may change in depth after being played on, or equipment may break after heavy use, and so forth. If they do not have a Certificate, ask if they have been audited. They may be in the process of making the modifications necessary to get the playground up to speed.

Visually Check the Playground

Some things to check before you select a child care facility:

• tot swings should be no higher than eight feet
• there should be no swings attached to gym sets
• no hard or heavy swing seats
• at least 6" depth of loose fill surfacing (mulch, sand, etc.), or else a rubber type of surfacing
• no sharp edges on equipment
• no equipment is in disrepair
• playground area is clean and well maintained
• no equipment is located next to fencing
• slides have a slow down curve at the end

There is a lot more to playground safety than many safety officials are aware of. Let's keep our kids safe and give them a hand.

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 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)