Why can't children go to the park?

[Hileni]

I'm feeling so cross, can anyone show me the light on why Toddler DS can't play at the park? He can sit on a bench when we are on a walk but can't sit on a swing?

It's outside so risk of infection is supposedly lower. Yet some children are allowed back to school cooped up indoors?

All non essential shops open for people to browse round and touch everything... Indoors. But i can't push my child on the roundabout?

I take my kids to the park outside my flat. We have no garden and I can look out the window to see if there is anyone there and if it's empty I grab my zoflora and cloth and off we go!

So playgrounds can’t be opened as children can’t social distance and it’s too dangerous but schools can? Hmmm.

If shops or pubs get too busy there are staff available to close the doors

Not the case in playgrounds, which we know will be over run with not just kids but the parents too...and where are they all going to dispose of the wipes etc for wiping down?

Our bins are quarantined for 72 hours, it will be so sloppy in parks with nobody to regulate it

Yes thats the reason they are closed, because the schools are out and everywhere else is shut the parks would be really busy

Did anyone see on the itv news just now a reporter interviewing a woman and her daughter in Middlesbrough, they were sitting on a bench in a playground! Then it showed the woman helping the girl on some of the play equipment. Really confused me as to why that was allowed! 😄

Because children having fun doesn't make money.

Because children having fun turns them into verminous superspreading parasites

Out of any social groups not social distancing, there is least harm and most benefit to children having normal interractions. They need something.

The biggest reason is the play areas are still closed as you are well aware.
As an aside to that there have been no maintenance checks done on ANY of them since 23rd March.
Do you really want your child to play on a potentially unsafe play area?
I'm a Clerk to three councils and have to advise folk daily why the play areas are still closed.

@ItsInTheShed wipes for wiping down? Really?

I really worry what is going to happen going forward if people really believe they’re going to be wiping old metal poles clean of viruses for the indefinite future.

The world has gone utterly mad.

@Molocosh correct, most are Parish Council owned but it is NOTHING to do with cost. It is purely down to maintenance. Most of my Cllrs are in the age bracket where they are shielding and cannot fulfil the responsibility of maintenance checks. Think about the extremes of weather we have had since 23rd March and then relate that to how things weaken etc in frost, rain, strong sunlight.
As soon as it is safe to open them, they will be open.
Think also of staff who have been redeployed for refuse collection and urgent maintenance, rather than their usual job of stress testing park equipment and unlocking park gates.

And please please don't lift your children over fences to play - there is no insurance to cover ans no comeback if your little darling hurts themself.

Signed, parish clerk of three parishes, repeatedly banging head against wall!

FWIW I also have 3 DCs, live next door to one of the play areas and have to disappoint my kids daily.

The ones round near us are padlocked and way too high to climb.

@PumpkinP ours are all waist height fences, there is signage up at them all but no padlocks as it was deemed a waste of public money when parents will just lift their children over to play and teenagers will climb over themselves.

@Icanflyhigh, what’s the relevance of refuse collection when town and parish councils aren’t responsible for it? It’s just more excuses, just like all those made for not opening public loos.

@TheMurk not my idea, just reading it on this thread alone

People are wiping down equipment first

Where I live people quietly and carefully removed the tape locking the gates (where the playgrounds were fenced). Kids had their play and then when they left they popped the tape back on.

Where there were no fences, they were used as normal, possibly more given kids weren't at school for a while.

I am in New South Wales though, so I acknowledge the situation is different.

Personally, I think they price children are paying is too high. If our kids hadn't been back at school/playgrounds opened when they did I would have been on the streets protesting about that.

Kids need to play and they need to play with each other. Gonna be a fucked up generation coming through if we aren't careful.

It's because the government doesn't think about kids. They've forgotten about them.

The world has gone utterly mad.

Never a truer word said.

Stop complaining op the important thing is that golf clubs reopen those are used by men don’t you know.

(Sarcastic I have felt so angry and upset this week that our children’s childhoods are being unnecessarily trashed)

My dp manages staff at the council. Every day he gets calls to say fences and locks have been cut open for kids to get into playgrounds. He then has to take his staff off other projects, grass cutting, grounds maintenance etc to come and fix these playgrounds. It's every day this happens including weekends. His phone goes a number of times over the weekend for him to arrange staff to sort this out. It's driving us mad plus it's having an effect on other council services now.

I live on a relatively new build estate and there are little playgrounds dotted around everywhere.... and I mean everywhere... We've discovered so many on our daily walk. There is also one on my doorstep (one reason we chose to rent the house). Prior to covid my youngest was the only kid in there whenever we went and we went a lot......whats the betting as soon as they open again they will be teeming with kids??! 🤦‍♀️

The secret is to go to the less affluent parks. Seems the kids have already decided to pull the tape down (good for them), and there’s no risk of being snapped on a local area Facebook page. Which tends to happen when kids go in the parks in the more affluent areas.

Just an observation of course!!

I think it’s because of the virus living on the surfaces and never being cleaned. Children put their hands in their mouth all the time after touching things.

the problem with the virus on surfaces... it's based on artificial conditions in labs. The conditions that samples are kept in are:.

in the dark
at room temperature (constantly near 18-22 C)
damp but not wet, won't wash away
dampness is with a pH neutral substance (just water)
the medium that virus is suspended in is itself sterile: no other microbes
on a pre-sterilised surface, no competing microbes there
no rubbing and brushing & bumping the surface while waiting 3 hours or 3 days or however long before testing

In other words, the surface is kept in conditions totally unlike real life outdoor playground surfaces in the UK.

On top of that, some of the experiments are based on detection with rt-PCR tests only: these detect genetic material but they can't tell if the virus is viable; the sample needs to be cultured for that.

fwiw, I think the risk of transmission from fomites is very low. And that handwashing does little to stop respiratory virus transmission. That c19 transmission between or from children is very low (c19 is NOT like influenza in that respect). But nobody wants to hear all that so I keep my head down.

Switzerland is among many other European countries that opened playgrounds and simply put a hand sanitizer station in. Yes there will be a risk but ensuring everyone keeps sanitizing would reduce it significantly. Discussing this with a friend she pointed out that sadly in the UK the sanitizer would probably be stolen in the first few days

It's to do with surfaces and "it" surviving on metal longer than other places but to my mind, with community cases now so much lower and you know, hand washing, the risk is pretty low.

The whole thing is so messed up, there doesn't seem to be any logic to the way restrictions are being relaxed, except that children are going to be last priority for everything.

The more I think about I the more pissed off i get. What can toddlers actually do? I can't meet up with friends or family without reminding them to keep a distance every 5 minutes, can't go to the park, can't go to toddler groups or libraries or soft play.