PlayCore Maintenance Guide
For a playground to thrive, good maintenance is essential. In this guide, you will learn how to maximize your school or agency playground maintenance efforts by properly identifying and correcting potentially hazardous conditions on the playground. This guide will help you define your maintenance plan as a key to protecting your investment, managing risk, improving children’s play experiences, promoting community values, and controlling expenses. Sample inspection forms help users identify procedures for correcting hazardous conditions and to develop inspection protocols and procedures for a sustainable playground maintenance program. To receive a complimentary copy of this guide, contact your GameTime or Play & Park Structures representative.

PlayCore Supervision Guide
Adequate playground supervision is an essential tool for providing a safer environment for active, fun play. In this guide, you will learn about building or improving a supervisory program within your school or agency. This guide will help you explore the value of play, gain an understanding of the play environment, identify potentially hazardous conditions, develop an understanding of acceptable play behaviors, define recommended supervision practices, and prepare yourself and your school to improve its playground supervisory program. Group activities allow schools/agencies to create customized site inspections, develop playground rules, identify sight line considerations and establish positive behavior supports so your playground supervision plan will be immediately improved. To receive a complimentary copy of this guide, contact your GameTime or Play & Park Structures representative.

Evaluating Play Equipment
How do we, as adults and providers of play environments, assure that we are offering all that a child requires in a play environment? This document helps to simplify the process of choosing and evaluating play equipment. Written by GameTime's Director of Marketing, Anne-Marie Spencer, it covers safety and design considerations, types of play, budget considerations, and more. It’s an excellent tool to help you navigate your important playground purchasing decisions.

Click here to download "Evaluating Play Equipment" (PDF).

Play Set Safety Checklist
All children deserve a safe place to play. According to the U.S. Consumer Products Safety Commission (CPSC), there were nearly 47,000 injuries on home playgrounds to children under the age of 15 in the latest year studied. The Home Safety Council and Swing-N-Slide want to help you create a safer play experience for your child. Please follow the attached guidelines, and inspect any play equipment before your child plays there. For more information visit www.swing-n-slide.com. 


Click here to download the English version of the "Play Set Safety Checklist" (PDF).
Click here to download the Spanish version of the "Play Set Safety Checklist" (PDF).

Pointers for Parents: Backyard Fun in the Sun: Learn How to Reduce the Chance for Play Set Injuries This Summer
This article offers helpful tips to help parents create a safer backyard play environment for their kids. 
For more information, visit www.swing-n-slide.com.

What Lies Beneath: Learn the Pros and Cons of a Variety of Surfacing Solutions
By Anne-Marie Spencer
One of the most important aspects of providing a safe play environment is the installation of high-quality surfacing with proper impact attenuation properties. When installed correctly, safety surfacing greatly reduces serious injuries that can occur if children fall from the play structure.

National Program for Playground Safety (NPPS)
S.A.F.E. – National Action Plan
The purpose of the National Action Plan for the Prevention of Playground Injuries is to provide a blueprint for playground safety. It is designed to be used by adults who care about children. Parents, teachers, recreation and park personnel, caretakers of children, and other concerned adults all have a role in providing safe play environments.

The document is available online at www.playgroundsafety.org/safe/index.htm.

NPPS' mission is to help the public create safe and developmentally appropriate play environments for children.

For more information visit www.playgroundsafety.org/. 
 

Association for Childhood Education International (ACEI)
The Mission of ACEI is to promote and support in the global community the optimal education and development of children, from birth through early adolescence, and to influence the professional growth of educators and the efforts of others who are committed to the needs of children in a changing society.

For more information visit www.acei.org.

ACEI Speaks - A Parent’s Guide to Playground Safety
Over 200,000 children suffer injuries each year that require emergency room treatment. Many of these injuries occur at public park, public school, preschool, and fast food restaurant playgrounds that are in a state of disrepair. This article offers parents helpful tips about common safety hazards on playgrounds and ways parents can help improve children’s playgrounds.

Available online at www.acei.org/playsafe.htm.

U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission
The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) is an independent agency within the United States Federal Government with the authority to inform the public of current product safety performance information and recommended practices. The CPSC first published their guidelines for public playgrounds in 1981 and have updated their publication several times since then. The current CPSC Handbook for Public Playground Safety, publication #325, is an excellent guide for owners and operators of public play environments. The CPSC staff is participating in voluntary standard activities for ASTM F1487 Standard Consumer Safety Performance Specification for Playground Equipment for Public Use. The voluntary standards are available online at www.cpsc.gov/volstd/publicplayground/publicplayground.html.

The CPSC Handbook for Public Playground Safety presents safety information for public playground equipment in the form of guidelines. The guidelines were first published in 1981 with revisions in 1991, 1994, and 1997.

Click here to download the CPSC Handbook for Public Playground Safety.

Tips for Public Playground Safety: Publication #324 is also available online at www.cpsc.gov/CPSCPUB/PUBS/Playfct.pdf.

CPSC Handbook for Outdoor Home Playground Safety is intended as guidance for homes and residential child care facilities. The guidelines were published in 2005.

Click here to download the CPSC Handbook for Outdoor Home Playground Safety.

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