Julie’s Jungle provides fun for everyone
Playgrounds are supposed to be a kid’s paradise, but children with disabilities often have difficulty using them. Julie’s Jungle in Hopewell Junction is one of the few fully-accessible playgrounds in New York that allows all children to play together.
In 2011, Janet McHugh, a volunteer on the East Fishkill Recreation Board, got the idea for the playground after speaking to a friend whose son had spina bifida and was wheelchair bound. “She was telling me how she couldn’t even bring him to playgrounds. The wood chips and the rubber chips in the playground would prevent her from being able to push a wheelchair through it,” McHugh said.
The town donated land in 2012 and McHugh formed a volunteer board, which started a non-profit to raise money for the playground. McHugh compiled a list of accessible playgrounds and visited them with the board. Upon visiting, McHugh realized, “Not all of them are accessible, even though they’re called accessible. They might have one accessible aspect, but they’re not truly accessible.”
These playgrounds may have only one accessible feature, such as a rubberized surface, but if the play structure consists of stairs, children in wheelchairs are limited.
At the first board meeting, East Fishkill Recreation Director Bill Green read a letter he had received from 12-year-old Natalie Keating. She was writing to say that playgrounds needed to be more accessible. At the time, her older sister Julie had recently passed away. Julie had been in a wheelchair and Natalie wrote how they were never able to play together at the playground. McHugh reached out to the Keating family and asked them to be on the board of directors. “Natalie inspired us to make it bigger and better. She inspired us to make sure it got done,” McHugh said.
After the Keating family became part of the project, the plans for the park doubled in size. “We met more and more families like the Keatings, more and more people like Natalie, and we realized this would affect so many more people than we realized,” McHugh added.
But what makes this park so special?
“The surface is entirely rubberized so that anyone with a wheeled vehicle, a walker or wheelchair can easily move around on the surface,” McHugh explained. “We have structures on the playground that have ramps so that anyone can get to the higher levels. There was a little girl who came out the first day we opened, who was blind and used a walking stick. Those guides on the side of the ramp made sure she didn’t fall off the side just by using her walking stick.”
However, there is a typical piece of the playground that is one of McHugh’s favorites: A metal slide. “A lot of people ask, ‘Why did you put a metal slide in a playground?’ The reason we do it is because of children who are deaf and have cochlear implants,” she said. “A child with a cochlear implant can’t slide down a plastic slide because it causes static and it will short out the cochlear, so they would have to unplug it to slide down a plastic slide and not be able to hear.” The metal slide allows children with cochlear implants to leave them plugged in, so they can continue to hear as they play.
Julie’s Jungle gets great visitation. Some members of the community have told McHugh that they have met families from New Jersey and Connecticut who have traveled just to visit the park. She is excited that the playground continues to expand. “Next to the playground this summer or fall, we hope to be building a sensory garden. It’s supposed to be a place for anyone who wants some quiet, whether that be a parent, grandparent or a child with autism who needs to get away from the noise. We’re hoping that the colors, the scents and all the things that they can touch will trigger their senses.”
McHugh and the recreation department are meeting with a landscape architect in May to finalize the design.
When the idea to build Julie’s Jungle first came about, there were few playgrounds of its kind. Now, playground companies are putting accessible equipment in their brochures and the word is being spread. More and more playgrounds will begin to be built with every child in mind. Of course, there are some limitations at Julie’s Jungle because not every child is able to use every piece of equipment. However, McHugh confirmed that it does achieve the board’s vision: “Our goal was to have something for every child.”
