Are Our Playground Safety Standards Worthwhile?

I found this book a very interesting read. The Austrailian Playground Standard has been unchanged for 20 years now and there's no regulatory mechanism in existence. This book claims 100,000 injuries a year in a country with a population around the same size of California. Hmmm... maybe these pesky playground standards do make our playgrounds safer.


Slippery slide in playground safety
By Tiy Chung
April 19, 2004

CHILDREN love the playground. It's a place where they can explore, take risks and have fun. But they can also be very dangerous places.

According to a new book on playground safety and equipment, Playgrounds the Australian Way, by Jack Grealy, up to 100,000 children are injured in playgrounds each year.
Grealy, who has designed and built children's playgrounds for the past 30 years, believes the situation in Australian playgrounds is appalling. "Some of the things that you see in playgrounds are enough to make you weep because you know that children must get hurt," Grealy says.
His book is exhaustive in its analysis of playground equipment and rates each in terms of its play value. It also suggests the best design standards and risk-prevention strategies for them.
According to the book, the No.1 cause of most playground injuries comes from falling off equipment. This comes from the poor design of the equipment and the inappropriate surfaces that many playgrounds are built on.

David Eager, of the faculty of engineering at the University of Technology, Sydney, is a member of the Australian standards committee on playgrounds and sits on the board of Kidsafe NSW. Eager says not enough is being done to prevent fall-related injuries. "In my experience there is a really low compliance with the Australian standards for impact attenuation," he says. "If we could get compliance with that standard in playgrounds, the incidence of injuries or admittance to emergency departments would drop significantly. I go around and measure these playgrounds and over 90 per cent are failing."

Eager believes the technology is out there to fix the problem. But many councils just aren't testing the quality of the surfaces on to which children fall.
"You get these fly-by-night undersurfacing companies out to make a quick buck and they've skimped on this and that, and used cheap materials," he says. "You see it all: big concrete slabs, buried pipes, bits of steel and tree roots, and these things are inevitably right where the kids will fall."

Grealy argues that a review of the Australian standard would go a long way to reducing the number of injuries every year. "The Australian standards on playgrounds are 20-odd years old," he says. "They were not particularly good then and they are not particularly good now."
The Australian Standard (No.4422) for falls is "1000 head injury criteria" (HIC) and a "200 times gravity max" (200G). Although that may not mean much to anyone but accident specialists, it is double what it should be.

"Even at playgrounds that do comply with the Australian standard, we're still getting unacceptable, severe injuries," he says. "If a child has a frontal lobe impact, at these current rates they will die." According to Eager, the standard was set up to prevent people dying when they fall but was never intended to stop long bone injuries or the types of injuries that send children to hospital.

There is a big push by Kidsafe and other organisations to lower the standard to half what it is now, which they argue would reduce the injury rate and severity of injuries significantly.
Grealy and Eager also believe that the playground industry should be regulated to stop the use of shoddy equipment and unsafe practices. "The major problem I think with playgrounds is that there is no regulatory body that says 'thou shalt not put kids at unnecessary risk'," Grealy says.
"The playground industry is self-governing and I think a lot of manufacturers are either oblivious to the injuries that their equipment causes or they are indifferent.

"What many suppliers have failed to grasp is innovative designs and colourful creations do not automatically meet the standards that provide opportunites for injury-free play."
Eager says the problem of regulation could be fixed overnight with a bit of lateral thinking.
"All you need to do is say a playground is a place of work and therefore falls under the Occupation, Health and Safety Act, and WorkCover would be involved," he says.
"Everywhere that we have a playground there is somebody who works for either the Department of Education, the local government or some childcare centre and because they're employed it becomes a place of work."

Grealy says that designing playgrounds is all about risk management.
For example, just as you would not leave a pot of hot water at the front of a stove where a child can pull it down, so playground equipment should be designed with common sense in mind.
"You would say on the face of it that playground standards in Australia look pretty good," Grealy says. "But when you look at the statistics, with 100,000 kids injured every year, and you then look at the costs involved in treating injured children, there's a hell of a lot of money involved. "I don't see any point in hurting kids unnecessarily."

National PTA should be ashamed

Oh my goodness gracious.

I find the comments below from Debbie Gatti of the North Rocklin PTA absolutely dumbfounding. How can the National PTA be opposed to local parent teacher associations assisting in improving our school's playgrounds? Sure schools need funding for books and teachers but this postition discounts the true value of free time on the playground and hiding behind the "L" word is as inexcusable as it is irresponsible.

The early lessons learned on the playground are as valuable as any a child will learn. Often our children's first experiences in learning to share, cooperating with others, socializing with peers, stress-coping, and problem-solving all occur on the playground. I challenge anyone reading this to consider their everyday life if the other adults that had not learned these life skills early and well.

We are raising the most obese generation in the history of the world and our schools are the last place where physical activity is mandated. How a national organization begin to discard the true value of physical benifits of the playground to our children? Perhaps a round padded room with TV's and Gameboys would be a better use of our children's recess?

Citing liability is another way of not having to explain your agenda. Here in Hawaii just the mention of the "L" word generates unfounded panic. Before acceptance of impending doom I suggest that we check the validity of the risk by asking a professional pointed questions such as, "what exactly is our liability in doing this?" In the case of a playground, if it is constructed within federal guidelines and laws, maintained and supervised correctly, there's next to zero laibility for the local PTA. To our knowledge there has never been a suit filed against a PTA in Hawaii for assisting with a playground.

http://www.thejournalnews.com/newsroom/102504/b03w25edplayground.html

By MERYL HYMAN HARRIS THE JOURNAL NEWS
(Original publication: October 25, 2004)

Playgrounds appear to be as irresistible to adults as they are to children.

Even though the National PTA advises against it, some local parent teacher associations continue to give playground equipment to local schools.

"Over the years, probably each one of the elementary schools have used PTA funds for playground equipment," said Debbie Gatti, North Rockland PTA Council president. "I can't tell my PTA units not to do it.

"The PTA is supposed to enhance children's lives at school. Children spend a lot of time on the playground, where things get old," she said. "Where is that money going to come from? Some from state grants and some from PTA because the district doesn't have enough money to put into playgrounds. I'd rather the district spent the money on books and teachers. I don't think it's realistic on the part of National PTA to say don't do that."

The national group is attempting to dissuade parents from buying equipment for reasons it considers entirely realistic.

National PTA does not recommend the purchase of equipment chiefly because of insurance liability and maintenance issues, said spokeswoman Laura Battle. "PTA efforts are better spent educating the community about funding for education," she said.

Nonsense, said Gatti. "There are liability issues with lots of things. I don't think you can live your life worrying about that. We have ice cream socials sponsored by PTA, Halloween parties, and there are always liability issues. Knock wood, we haven't had anybody sue, but you have to decide what's important, and the kids have to have a safe place to play.''

A leading advocate of safe playgrounds agrees that the National PTA has gone too far.

"I think that's a terrible decision on their part because the playground companies have improved the safety of equipment, particularly in the past 10 years," said Donna Thompson, director of the National Program for Playground Safety.

Thompson and her group were among those who over the past decade lobbied successfully for stringent standards of equipment to stem the tide of accidents. It is estimated that some 200,000 children are sent to emergency rooms every year because of playground accidents at a cost of more than $1 billion. Home playgrounds, such groups caution, are often more dangerous than public ones.

Thompson's group does spot checks of public playgrounds throughout the United States, grading each state on such criteria as supervision, age-appropriate design, maintenance and surfacing. From 2000 to 2004, New York rose from a C+ to a solid B.

It is with those current safety standards in mind that local PTAs purchase equipment, said Gatti. "The PTA sits down with the principal and it's a collaborative thing," she said. "They think about what will be the safest thing the children will enjoy."

Fitness Area
Kapolei Knolls Private Park

Hawaii Public Schools Playground Safety Program

Hawaii Public Schools Safety Program

This issue in the below article applies to Hawaii as well. To my knowledge, the DOE has no system-wide playground safety or playground supervision plan in place. Individual schools are left to put together a plan on their own. We can't expect every school to have a playground expert. It's my opinion that the DOE should provide a uniform and manditory framework for the schools based on local and national safety data and then allow the schools to submit for modification to suit their individual needs.

______________________________

State should set standards for school playground safety

The issue: Playground safety
Our opinion: The state should set sensible, mandatory guidelines for schools to follow.

This story ran on nwitimes.com on Tuesday, September 28, 2004 12:23 AM CDT
At many elementary schools, playgrounds are getting a much-needed makeover. For safety's sake, familiar equipment such as teeter-totters, merry-go-rounds, monkey bars and large slides are disappearing.

The Portage Township school district, for instance, is planning significant playground improvements next year at seven of the district's eight elementary schools.Many other districts have already redesigned the playgrounds to make them safer, replacing everything from the equipment to the pea gravel underneath. The ground is now covered with wood chips, which are softer to cushion falls and reduce injuries.

Liability concerns are driving the changes.

The aim is to reduce the number of injuries. The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission says more than 200,000 children are treated each year at emergency rooms for injuries associated with playground equipment. Most of the injuries involve falls.

The federal agency offers a free Handbook for Public Playground Safety, readily available on the Internet, with tips on playground design.

Most schools use the agency's voluntary guidelines and the directives of insurance companies.

The Indiana Department of Education doesn't have any requirements about playground design. It should.

The state also should set mandatory standards for playground supervision to make sure the right number of teachers, aides or adult volunteers is on the playground to respond to the inevitable injuries or disturbances.

It is important for children to be encouraged to be physically active, but they must do so in a safe environment.

Your opinion, please

Should the state set playground design and supervision standards for schools?

Kamehameha Main Campus

For a 360 degree view of this playground go to:

http://www.ksbe.edu/kstour/kapalama/kapalama01.html