Press Room

Safety vs. Challenge – The Playground Dilemma
by Peter Kells

How safe is safe? It's a question that's often asked when looking at our playground spaces. The last decade has seen an increased awareness of playground injuries. In Canada, the Canadian Hospitals Injury Reporting and Prevention Program (CHIRPP) gathers statistics on playground injuries. In many other parts of the industrialized world statistics are being gathered which show similar results to the CHIRPP data resulting in an international realization that playground injuries do occur in significant numbers. Add to this the fact that we are live in an increasingly more litigious society. The result is that more organizations are involved at provincial, national and international levels in the field of playground safety.

In Canada, CSA International published a revised playground standard in 1998 (CAN/CSA-Z614-98 Children's Playspaces and Equipment). This has become the Canadian benchmark for establishing requirements for play spaces and equipment. This standard has been substantially harmonized with the technical requirements of the American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM) F 1487 as part of an international effort. Over the last few years, new playground standards have been developed for the European Economic Community, Australia/New Zealand and a committee in Japan is currently developing standards for public playgrounds. During the last few years there have been two International Playground Safety Conferences held at the University of Pennsylvania.

A number of private organizations such as Safe Kids Canada, the National Program for Playground Safety in the U.S., as well as various parks and recreation associations, such as the Ontario Parks Association and the Canadian Parks and Recreation Association, and government agencies, such as Health Canada, produced videos, pamphlets and web sites to highlight and educate the public on issues associated with Playground Safety. The fundamental issue that all of these organizations are trying to address is “how safe is safe on the playground?”

There is also a whole new climate within the regulatory community around playgrounds. In the hopes of ensuring public safety, most municipal and provincial government purchasers require suppliers to guarantee some form of compliance with an applicable voluntary standard. The most recent development in Ontario is a requirement of the Ministry of Community and Social Services that operators of licensed child care centres meet the CSA Standard. Some provincial governments are considering mandatory compliance for all public play spaces. In the U.S., there are currently at least six states where compliance with the Consumer Product Safety Commission Guidelines is mandated by legislation.

When rules are in place, they must also be enforced. To that end a whole industry of playground inspector/auditors has sprung up. The U.S. National Playground Safety Institute has developed programs to create Certified Playground Safety Inspectors. In Canada, the Canadian Parks and Recreation Association has created instructional programs leading to the designation Canadian Certified Playground Inspector and the a more advanced auditor level.

In Ontario, the Ontario Parks Association (OPA) has created the Ontario Playground Academy to increase knowledge and awareness not only of playground safety, but also of good practice in the areas of maintenance, play value, playability, layout and hands-on management of the play space. Graduates of this six day program receive the designation Registered Ontario Playground Practitioner. These programs and others are intended to increase awareness of safety issues on the part of inspectors and, in the case of OPA, to increase awareness of what makes a play space “well-designed, well-maintained, innovative, and challenging.”

This brings us back to the same question: how safe is safe? Risk management science has developed the concept that a thing is safe if its risks are judged to be acceptable. This idea implies two activities: measuring risk; and judging the acceptability of the risk. We can apply that logic to a butcher knife – a dangerous tool to be sure, but one where the safety risks are acceptable when weighed against the benefits.

So how safe should a playground be? The purpose of a playground is to offer "play value". This, in turn, fosters mental and physical development. We must look at safety in the context of play value. There is no arbitrary definition of safety – it is all relative. That is why playground standards almost never use the word safe – it defies definition. The more common term is hazard reduction.

In 1987, the Play For All Guidelines in the U.S. defined:
. a hazard – something a child does not see; and
. a challenge – a risk the child can see and chooses to undertake or not.

Children need to take risks to challenge their skills and courage. A risk free play area is neither possible nor desirable. The goal is to reduce life threatening and debilitating injury – without eliminating the challenges. That is why there is a focus on hazards which cause serious injury in the CSA Standard. Such things as string and toggle entanglement (which can cause strangulation), head and neck entrapment and falls to hard surfaces are typical hazards that can be avoided.

A playground swing has great play value. To use a swing requires dexterity, balance and sense of motion on the part of a child but there is always a risk of falling – a risk a child knowingly takes. A rusty swing bearing that breaks is a hazard the child cannot see and must be avoided. The solution is to remove the hazard and still keep the challenge associated with the swing. Keeping the challenging elements in the playground while reducing the "hazards" must be our motto.

Often the challenging elements require more maintenance, are expensive to build, require more thoughtful design and present greater risks of failure to the child. Yet as we remove challenge from playgrounds in our quest for safety, children will find challenges in other places like local construction sites or in vandalizing the playground. Children will use a playground beyond the limits of their ability - that is how they discover their limits. A playground should be a place where it is possible to stretch the limits of ability without the chance of serious injury – to create and maintain such places is both our challenge and our dilemma.

Peter Kells has been actively involved with the design, manufacture, playspace evaluation, teaching and standards writing for playgrounds over the last 18 years. He is current president of the Canadian Association of Playground Practitioners and a member of the CSA Technical Committee on Children's Playspaces. Peter resides in Ottawa and is president of Grace-Kells Consultant Inc.