Caledonia Play designs play solutions for children with additional support needs
2 Aug 2024
For children with additional support needs, adventurous outdoor play can be a therapeutic experience that provides a moment of serenity outside of everyday life.
And for those who design and build play equipment, appreciating the elongated and repetitive nature of many beneficial play activities also means understanding the demands placed on the kit.
According to Jamie Bruce Jones, who heads up the team at Caledonia Play, an independent manufacturer of quality wooden outdoor play equipment, creating unique and robust swings and slides that allow children to explore and challenge themselves is a detailed process.
“It is incumbent upon us to recognise the relentless rough and tumble to which our equipment will be subjected,” he explained. “Working with Special Educational Needs (SEN) schools over the years means I know our equipment will be tested to the limit, so we design our kit using bigger diameters to ensure they can withstand the forces going through them.”
Adapting play equipment designs for SEN environments can involve everything from using wider swing seats to raising sandpits to accommodate wheelchairs, but Jamie says there’s lots to consider during the process.
He continued: “Working with parents of children with additional support needs, we’ve learnt that some kids don’t like things passing their peripheral vision. For example, if they’re on a swing, the legs of the equipment will pass them repeatedly, which could cause anxiety. To minimise this, we widen the frame and position the swings more in the middle to ensure the users are further away from the legs of the swing, giving them more space and clearance.”
A new piece of kit recently launched by Caledonia Play emphasises the importance of this adaptation and refinement process. The Super Swing is a new domestic-use timber swing that has been specifically designed for children and adults with additional support needs, and can accommodate extended and repetitive use, which is known to promote calmness.
Jamie says the new kit was inspired by the company’s commercial solutions that deliver meditative benefits to SEN users, but this time in a domestic setting. The Super Swing has subsequently become the company’s first domestic product specifically created with additional support needs and disabilities in mind.
“The inspiration came from conversations we’d had with so many parents of children and young adults with additional needs,” he explained. “Many were neurodiverse and relied heavily on a swing because the vestibular activity is calming and therapeutic. It had become a mainstay of their daily lives.”
Unfortunately, conventional swing solutions will only last the pace for a while before showing signs of instability. By contrast, The Super Swing is constructed using slow-grown round timbers and heavy-duty galvanised swing points with washer plates and nyloc nuts.
“A larger swing seat was also required,” Jamie noted. “We used a special commercial grade seat that was specifically designed for adults and disabled users. It was also important to eliminate movement either at the top of the frame or at ground level, so we added two extra diagonal braces and extended the legs for digging into the ground without losing the frame height.”
When it comes to SEN play equipment, Jamie says the details matter: “First and foremost, we build play equipment that can accommodate repetitive and continual use, but we also ensure the user feels safe and can enjoy the experience. Play is about exploration and activity and that is as equally valid for the SEN communities as it is for everyone.”
For more information about The Super Swing, visit caledoniaplay.com
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