Playgrounds are a great place for your child to have fun, get much needed exercise away from the television and games consoles and have a good dose of fresh air but before you let your child, of any age, play in your local playground there are a few checks on the playground safety you should make:

Take a good look at the playground and how well it is maintained:

• Playgrounds provide different equipment for different ages, which means that the size and proportions will vary from apparatus to apparatus. Some will not be suitable for your child. Generally there will be a playground for under 5s and one for 5 – 12 year olds.

• Make sure there are protective barriers on equipment that is higher up. Also take a look to see if moving equipment like swings and seesaws are located away from other areas of the playground.

• Are there any small spaces that a child’s hand, leg, arm, head etc could get caught?

• You will not want your child playing on any broken, therefore dangerous equipment, so cast your eye around to ensure that the playground is well maintained. Is wooden equipment well maintained with no cracks or potential splintering? Is the metal equipment rusty?

• Are the surrounding fences tall enough and well constructed enough to make sure your child cannot run into any traffic in the surrounding area?

• Does the park have adult supervision? If not this can be you, as a parent. You can make sure that your child is using the equipment suitable for their age, and also that they are using it correctly. Keep a careful eye out for any misuse that could end up in an injury.

• Lastly take a look at the surface. Nowadays, there is no need for a playground to have a hard concrete or asphalt surface, with tree roots showing through! There are plenty of softer alternatives like rubber matting or rubber mulch.

Most of these checks are more common sense than anything else but we all want a safe playing environment for our child. If your local playground safety doesn’t come up to scratch, be sure to campaign to your local state authority to change this. You won’t be the only one with concerns.

If the surfacing is one of the problems, then Rubber Recycle is great place to stop by and recommend to your local state authority.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 26th, 2007 at 7:00 am and is filed under Playground Safety. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.