Six-year-old Elise Jackson couldn’t join friends on her school’s playground.
The Carnarvon kindergarten student has cerebral palsy and trouble navigating her walker on wood chips and soft ground. That changed when she received a power chair last week.
“And it was great because she drove it on there and she had a whole bunch of kids following her around,” said Elise’s father, Darrin Jackson. “They were all playing together and that’s the first time she’s really ever been able to do that herself.”
Elsie’s experience will get even better with the Carnarvon Play for EveryBody fundraising campaign, an effort by the school’s parent advisory council to replace the Dunbar school’s 30-year-old playground equipment with new designs, including rubber surfacing, that accommodate people of varying mobility.
“Our school is one of the most accessible schools on the West Side,” said Brittanny Downey-MacDonald, co-chair of the campaign. “The grounds are flat, the school is flat, it has no stairs… It’s a school that’s actually chosen by a lot of parents who have children with mobility issues and also by parents who themselves have mobility issues.”
The 3,400-square-foot playground will be installed on Vancouver School Board property adjacent to Carnarvon Park. Eighty per cent of the space and equipment is to be accessible. Downey-MacDonald says the closest comparably accessible playground is in Port Coquitlam.
“If you have a parent with mobility issues, they will be able to actively engage and play and climb and swing with their kids who are able-bodied,” she said. “Or if you have a grandparent that struggles with going up stairs, they’re going to be able to engage in that way.”
The playground will include a “school bus” that accommodates two wheelchairs, bounces and serves as climbing equipment, a double slide so parents and children with lower-body mobility issues can slip down in tandem, and a support chair pressed into the sandpit.
“So that children in chairs can actually get out of their chair and into the sandbox and get in on the action instead of having to point or roll up to a sand table,” Downey-MacDonald said.
The 20 per cent of the playground that’s theoretically not accessible includes horizontally mounted monkey bars.
“You can actually pull yourself along as opposed to having to hang,” Downey-MacDonald said.
Carnarvon Play for EveryBody needs to raise $35,000 to reach its goal of $135,000. Most of the money raised has come from small community fundraisers. The Tire Stewardship of B.C. has granted $23,400 to provide half of the 100 per cent recycled rubber surfacing.
Carnarvon Play for EveryBody hopes to break ground for the new equipment in August. The equipment, most of which will be provided by Canadian company Blue Imp, would be ready for action in October.
Elise looks forward to the rubber surface, which she expects will make accessing playground equipment “pretty easier.”
“The first thing that her class does as soon as recess starts is takes off to the playground and she can’t follow them,” her father said. “It’ll allow her to actually go along with them and play whatever they’re playing instead of having to sit with the few that are hanging out around the pavement area.”
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