PLAYLINK / Free Play Network

Outdoor Play

As Play providers we understand the need for Play outside, and the benefits that this play gives to young people. We are aware of the obesity factor, lack of social skills, and parents perception of the risk from strangers. To develop properly young people must also be able to take risks and accidents are a part of risk taking they will happen as young people discover their limits. However one of the problems we have to overcome is parental understanding of this and their misguided view that there is a pot of gold at the end of every accident ie the no win no fee culture. Providers are increasingly cocooning the young people in their care because of this fear, the whole of society needs to look carefully at what is happening to this generation of youngsters and change before its too late.
Posted by: Tony Hill, Assistant Play services manager, Southampton City Council, 27 June 2007, 18:36

Adventure Playgrounds - I love 'em.
Many are a pale shadow of what they were a generation ago, but I had the privilege to work on and ultimatly mangage them in Lambeth (and as an aside, if your local authority cannot afford them, how can LB Lambeth afford to staff 15, most open 6 days a week)

Bernard is right, they do not attract compensation claims, we chased off the few that tried, but generally the staff have a relationship with the community which precludes claims, and staff are on hand to explain how injuries did occur. Remember liability is only a problem if negligence is proven, and staff training makes this very unlikely. Anyway what kid wants to known locally as the one who bankrupted the Playground's management committee and closed it down? It's all about community, stupid!

An NCB study of accidents in AP's in 3 boroughs, Lambeth, Southwark and Lewisham concluded they were as safe as staying at home, and a 2001 MORI poll Citizens Panel put them top of the list of what parents wanted, above all other forms of childrens recreational provision.
Posted by: Alan Sutton, Policy officer, London Play, 27 June 2007, 18:36

Reluctance of play providers, both officers, managers and members, is perhaps the third greatest inhibitor of children's free play. It is a very complex subject and hard to get one's head round, let alone respond to. It is now the biggest component of the talks that I do on risk in play.

If you have a pay policy (not stategy!) that makes clear the need for risk and the inevitability of occasional accidents and you risk assess the provision that you make, it is extremely unlikely that either a court will find agaist you or that the H&SE will want to prosecute.

It is important never to settle out of court unless you are cnvinced that you were at fault or would inevitably lose the case. From what I amhearing, Local Authorities are increasingly taking cases to court and winning and the number of claims being made is dropping.

For the sake of children and ultimately of society YOU MUST BE BRAVE.

Easier said than done I know, but true none the less.

Posted by: Robin Sutcliffe, 23 June 2007, 14:13

In the field in which I work, which is risk management, there's a lot of talk about not the public, but publics ie there's more than one set of ideas out there. Secondly, it's been found that a lot of risk management activity is driven by managers' perceptions of the publics perception. However, having read only last week of a parent who took a chain saw to an allegedly risky piece of play equipment in a school playground, it's pretty clear that the anti-risk element is out there as Tony says. More comforting were two articles in The Times last week saying how children were being deprived of outdoor activity and freedom by frightened parents.
I think what Bernard says is also true. That somehow we must remove the tag of safe from playgrounds because if safe means or implies no accidents it is wrong. Over the last 20 years there have been about 40,000 accidents on playgrounds and, despite all the emphasis on safety in the form of inspections, fencing, removal of certain equipment, IAS etc, the rate is largely unchanged. The only safe playground in that sense is no playground at all, but that simply drives kids into totally uncontrolled places which may be really dangerous. So I'm in favour of marketing playgrounds as challenging and unavoidably and necessarily risky, just as skate parks so obviously are.

Posted by: david ball, 09 June 2007, 18:26

Fair points, Tony. However, let me for a moment face the other way and look at play providers responsibility in all this, and what they might be doing better. Part of what informs these comments is the 'evidence', albeit partial and anecdotal, about the public perception of risks.

In this regard, it's worth noting the comments of local authority officers who have responsibilities for BOTH skate parks (age range: 8 - 30) and unsupervised playgrounds. Broadly, they know that accidents up to and including broken limbs happen on skate parks, yet this leads to few if any complaints or claims. On the playgrounds, completely different picture, with Officer time being taken up responding to complaints and claims for almost any cut or graze.

On adventure playgrounds, or at least quite a few, the claim/complaint culture appears not to have taken hold.

Why might this be?

Part of the reason may be that skate parks and adventure playgrounds so clearly entail risk taking. The provision, simply by looking at it, says what it is, what it entails.

Those might be deemed special cases, but they may offer a clue about the way play providers should be expressing themselves. PLAYLINK's experience is that they do this badly - or at least partially. Publicity/policy is replete with words such as 'safe', and what appears to be a fairly standard formualtion,'This provision offers a safe, caring environment where the individual needs of your child will be met'. In the context of play - entailing as it does risk, challenge, falling over and so forth - this sets the wrong tone. Where play itself is described as part of the provision's 'offer', it is described in reductive, unhelpful terms; what we have come to characterise as the "bright primary colours, bouncy castle, letting off steam, garish 'safety' surfacing, face painting" type of imagery. The word risk is hardly used, and if so, sheepishly.

To summarise: we need to mean what we say and say what we mean. Incidentally, I believe this would help counter unjustified negligence claims on the simple grounds that judgments about negligence turn to a significant degree on the question of 'what's reasonable in the circumstances'. If play providers actually say it's about risk, challenge, the need to learn through experience and so on, they have said what those circumstances are, and hence judgments about what is reasonable has a reference point appropriate to play provision. For more on this,please go to the legal advice on PLAYLINK's Home Page: www.playlink.org.uk
Posted by: Benard Spiegal, Principal, PLAYLINK, 08 June 2007, 12:34