Sharpe's Opinion
Thursday, 29th Oct, 2009
More on Watford’s Adventure Playgrounds
Mayor Dorothy Thornhill explains a bit more about what’s going on with Watford’s adventure playgrounds:
I wanted to reassure residents that I’ve not taken leave of my senses, and contrary to reports in the media, Watford Borough Council has not banned parents from public parks and playgrounds in the town! This is about our adventure playgrounds, which are closed-off, fenced-in, fully supervised facilities for over 5s. Parents drop off their kids and leave them in our care – no different to playgroups or schools where adults are also not allowed to stay.
That seems fairly reasonable – there’s lots of places which run on these terms, including groups like Football clubs, Scouts or even the week-long PGL camps1. There isn’t a problem with parents dropping kids off to play, if they choose to. My issue, though, was Mayor Thornhill’s assumption that parents constitute ‘a threat’ to children. Unfortunately, she doesn’t seem to have figured that one out:
What I have taken from this is the importance of the accuracy of language and the power of the web – none of these news stories would have appeared if we didn’t refer to our adventure play sessions as adventure playgrounds.
No! None of these stories would have appeared if you hadn’t suggested that allowing parents to stay at these facilities would lead to children being abused or snatched. Big, big, BIG difference.
- Affectionately known as ‘Parents, Get Lost’ [↩]
Comments
“It’s obviously acceptable to say parents can’t stay in a centre designed for kids to be left”
Well this attitiude that parents are a nuisance who get in the way of the professional upbringing of children is seeping in everywhere. It should not be at all obvious that parents can’t stay anywhere that their children are. Unless of course the kids want a bit of privacy for once.
It is generally a good thing that parents are involved in their children’s activities.
I think dorothy has handled this very badly, why send a letter stating “new” ofsted rules are stopping parents from staying onsite, if they were never allowed in the first place
This playground has worked very well as is, and now, all it is doing destroying the community spirit, that it has promoted for the past 30 years
Aye—I’ve met her (once), and was reasonably impressed at the time, but my opinion is nowhere near as high now. The media coverage is wrong, but her initial explanation and comments fed the coverage and blog commentary.
It’s obviously acceptable to say parents can’t stay in a centre designed for kids to be left, schools and playgroups do it and no one is bothered.
But saying that this is for child protection reasons just fuels a fire.
OTOH, she’s right to say that you can’t win on this one, the media have been running peado scare stories for decades, councils are now running scared and being over cautious, and are getting slated for it.
Still, another notch on the “directly elected mayors=bad plan” argument, even the ones from ‘my’ side do daft things and can’t be held accountable properly for it.
MatGB
October 29, 2009 at 4:42 pm