Adventure time!

Risk-taking is an essential feature of play and healthy childhood development. It builds physical ability, promotes discovery, fosters self-confidence and independence, and helps children master important learning skills such as judging what activities are safe.

While 60 per cent of Australian parents fear for their children’s safety in the playground, evidence from Europe proves that allowing equipment designers the opportunity to provide more exciting and challenging play experiences does not increase the likelihood or severity of accidents.

In contrast, children who are exposed to too little challenge often take on inappropriate risks, where the chance of injury is high, because they lack both the ability to judge the level of risk and the strategies and skills to tackle it effectively.

Successfully navigating risk in childhood can also have long-term benefits for the individual, and society as a whole. It allows children to develop risk management skills they will use across a host of settings in adulthood, including the ability to assess unfamiliar situations, recognise their own strengths and limitations, and gauge when to exercise caution.

Jessica on the playground. For full credit see below.

From negotiating potentially risky physical tasks – such as driving a car in new environments and conditions – to social situations and professional decision-making, the groundwork for our ability to deal with the unexpected is laid in childhood.

So it’s vital we give children opportunities to explore and experiment in environments that provide a degree of managed risk.

Yet, all too often we see school and council playgrounds either populated with unimaginative and undemanding equipment or removed altogether, in the interest of maintaining children’s safety.

The release of a new Australian Standard for playground equipment and surfacing offers the opportunity to turn this around. Based on the existing European Standard, it enshrines risk-taking as an essential feature of play, which must be balanced with “the need to keep children safe from serious harm”.

Through the introduction of skill-based categories of equipment with an increased allowable fall height for more skilful climbers, the new standard will allow Australian children of all ages and abilities to experience risk and excitement.

The standard identifies three distinct categories of playground equipment: equipment that is easily accessible to all ages and abilities; equipment that is not easily accessible; and equipment for supervised early childhood settings. Each type of equipment will offer challenges and protections appropriate to the way it’s used.

For early childhood settings, there are separate safety provisions to public play spaces since they are staffed by trained childcare professionals who act as the primary safety intervention. This allows for less onerous technical safety interventions and the use of equipment that is banned in the public play space, such as movable play equipment.

In public play spaces where anybody can use the equipment, the rationale is to apply an ability filter, providing greater levels of safety to children who require increased protection, while exposing those with more ability to more risk.

For example, small children and children with disabilities can easily access equipment that is fitted with barriers that prevent falling, while more skilled children can gain access to equipment that exposes them to much higher falls.

This is the most obvious change from the previous standard – an increase in the free height of fall from 2.5 metres to 3 metres.

Realistically, kids will fall – they fall all the time. And 3 metres sounds like a long way for a child to fall – particularly to a parent. But there’s compelling evidence that this increased risk of falling will not translate to increased injuries.  

With the greater fall height, the surface is now critical because it’s the system that protects children when they do fall. In all cases, the standard requires that children be protected by an impact-attenuating surface that has performance characteristics that exceed the maximum fall height of the equipment.

The new standard is also based on decades of data on injury and accident patterns that have been observed in child populations around the world. The European Playground Standard has allowed these more lenient fall heights for 15 years, and to date there is no evidence that these ‘more risky’ exposures have led to either a greater number of injuries or more severe injuries.

In 2009, I had the pleasure of being involved in the creation of a rather remarkable playground. I was invited by Bovis Lend Lease and Aspect Studios to be the playground ‘safety’ engineer on the Darling Quarter redevelopment project.

I recall the initial briefing session: ‘You want to install a playground that’s exciting for kids of all ages? Sure – but there’s a catch.’ My job was to ensure it complied with the Australian playground safety standard guidelines.

To most people, these risk and safety are 180 degrees out-of-phase. To me, this was a challenge I couldn’t resist – to prove to all the naysayers that it could be done.

If you visit Darling Harbour today, you’ll see a playground that’s exciting and challenging for toddlers, teens and adults. It has the highest 3D net play-structure in Australia, waterplay with an Archimedes screw and pumps, weirs and dams, a 21 metre flying fox, a huge 8 metre long by 3 metre high mound slide, climbing ropes, an exhilarating 3D swing and more. And best of all, it’s free!

Little wonder the Darling Quarter playground is the most visited one in Australia and is internationally recognised as a top Sydney attraction for overseas visitors.

This playground was built to comply with the old standard, but as part of a well-funded commercial venture, it was a feat of the imagination made possible by resources the public sector could only dream of. The new standard opens up possibilities for designers and engineers to create more inspiring playgrounds regardless of context.

With the passage of time, playgrounds across the country will become more challenging as older equipment is retired, removed and replaced with equipment that meets the new standard.

Children will perceive they are taking greater risks, and in so doing test and stretch their limits. This is great news for Australian kids and, ultimately, Australia as a nation.