Assessing playground safety: A collaborative community outreach program

Background: Each year over 200,000 children are injured on playgrounds. Safe playgrounds at home, school, and in the community are essential to prevent these injuries and maintain the health of school-aged children.

Purpose: The purpose of this presentation is to detail a community outreach project designed to advocate and educate parents and caregivers on the importance of playground safety.

Methods: Doctoral students collaborated with a local community action agency and three of the agency's childcare centers to educate parents and caregivers how to assess the safety of public playgrounds. Project staff utilized a simple checklist to teach caregivers how to assess playground safety. Additionally, participants were provided with a list of community resources to contact in the event of finding safety hazards.

Results: Twenty-one parents, caregivers, and teachers participated in the assessments. Participants demonstrated the ability to use the checklist to evaluate playground safety. Before the assessment activity 27% reported previously assessing safety of a playground, 21% reported ability to identify safety issues, and 11% reported knowing how to assess playground safety. At completion of the project, 100% of participants reported knowing how to assess playground safety, ability to teach someone else how to assess, and committed to assessing a community playground before the end of the school year.

Conclusions: The checklist tool for assessing playground safety was successful in teaching and promoting playground safety in this community. Future directions include continuing playground safety awareness and education at these centers and expanding this project to other facilities in the area.