PlaySAFE360 — Playground Monitoring for the Future

This is your biweekly dose of playground knowledge from someone who's spent 20 years inspecting them.

In this issue, I’m excited to finally give you a free opportunity to try PlaySAFE360, my flagship playground monitoring software that I believe will be a gamechanger.

I’ll also share a quick story about a playground installed in an underserved area, and how an accessible playground was brought to life at one of its local elementary schools.

All that and more lies ahead in The Playground Post.

Over the past six months, my team and I have poured over dozens of playground incident reports, conducted dozens of inspections, and collated this data in order to answer a fundamental question: How can we prevent playground safety-related incidents before they occur?

We knew we couldn’t travel into the future and tell a child to slow down so they don’t trip over uneven surfacing, but what if there were a way to ensure that same surfacing were smooth and danger-free? That’s where PlaySAFE360 comes in.

I’m excited to share with Playground Post readers a free 6-month pilot program that you can try on your playground. Use the link below to start your trial and bring the next generation of playground safety to your playground:

Let me know what you think, and how you plan on using this program to foster playground safety.

Last Friday, a tornado warning was issued near where I live. Thankfully, a tornado never touched down, but the aftermath still included a great deal of trash, plastic, and other debris strewn across people’s yards. At my kids’ school, the playground equipment was intact, but, much like the surrounding area, a good amount of trash and sticks littered the surfacing.

In the wake of storms like this, always make sure to do a spot check of your playground surfacing to ensure no safety hazards are present. This way, you make your playground inviting and remove potential tripping risks.

One of the most rewarding parts of the playground business is expanding the number of kids who can get out and play in a way that suits their individual needs and wants. I believe no two playgrounds should be the same, precisely because no two kids are the same.

This is why I was so pumped about the project at South View Elementary. Located in the mid-size college town of Muncie, Indiana, South View Elementary serves 500 students, most of whom come from lower-income families. In my experience, it’s in schools like this where kids with disabilities struggle to find playground equipment that they can use.

When we first started talking to the school superintendent, he mentioned the desire to have the playground in front of the school, so that it can serve the community as a whole.

When the playground was built, it included a plethora of accessible equipment, including a wheelchair-accessible scaling ladder, swings with adaptive seats, and a play structure featuring wheelchair-accessible ramps. Today, the entire south Muncie community is enjoying the benefits of their new accessible playground that every child can use to its fullest potential.

Playground projects like this are especially fulfilling. The more kids who can play, the better, and this expansive play potential is exactly what the South View project brought to life.

I’m thrilled to give you guys the opportunity to access an early version of PLAYSafe360. It’s a system that I’m passionate about, and my hope is that kids across the country will benefit from the safer environments it’ll help foster.

If you’re interested in how playground monitoring can effect positive change on your playground, reply with the word SAFE and I'll send you more details.

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Talk soon,

Nic Breedlove

Certified Playground Safety Inspector

20 years in the game. Still learning.