Child Safety Week All Year Round?
Thanks to the innovation and annual promotion by the Child Accident Prevention Trust, Child Safety Week is firmly embedded into the programmes of countless local health initiatives. Each year sees new ideas being introduced to raise awareness among parents, carers and all those with responsibility for children’s safety. But what happens during the other fifty-one weeks of the year? How is the safety of children kept at the top of everyone’s agenda?
1. Ongoing records of the amazing events that were set up during the Week itself
Photographs, news cuttings, paintings and drawings by children, recordings of songs they sang, models they made; all of these items and more can be put on display wherever families meet and mix. Albums remind their readers and browsers about the fun they had and, perhaps, the messages they have begun to assimilate and act upon.
2. Safety celebrations
RoSPA knows of at least one community that chose to celebrate one Child safety week that they had all survived the past year with only the minor cuts and grazes which children wear almost as badges of spirited play on knees and elbows. How about a monthly party along the same theme? Turning the statistics on their head, most children do not suffer tragic accidents and parents should feel proud that their attention to safety has paid off. Let’s share the secrets of this success and to coin a phrase “Pass it on “ to our friends and neighbours.
3. Roadshows
RoSPA was pleased to discover one enterprising Family worker in Birmingham setting up a family roadshow during lunchtimes. An invited audience of parents and carers with their charges sat expectantly beside a small stage in a leisure centre. Four twenty minutes sessions were led by representatives of the police, fire service, St John’s Ambulance and RoSPA. Parents heard about keeping themselves and their family safe in the street, at home and how to give emergency first aid.
4. Problem Solving Scenarios
Another practical way of maintaining safety at the top of the agenda is through sessions for small groups of parents looking at rooms in the home. By constructing a typical scene with some furniture, appliances such as a kettle, electric fire, cooker, families can discuss the safety issues involved. What happens when you are a single parent in the house, cooking a meal in the kitchen and the telephone goes or someone knocks on the door? What are the dangers for children in this situation and how can you sort out a sequence if actions that keeps your child safe?
5. Positive Safety Approaches
There are increasingly moves to inject positive ideas into Child Safety Week events by promoting sensible safety; managing the risks involved in an activity rather than avoiding anything hazardous. Demonstrating how to manage the risks with cycling, swimming or climbing can be arranged with the advice of appropriate experts to work with the public. While this makes a good event for the Week itself, why not continue regular sessions emphasising the positive points with an activity that is properly supervised in which the hazards are identified and the risks well-controlled?
6. Safety Corner
Is there a space in your building where people congregate that you could use as a focus for a piece of safety equipment such as a smoke alarm? The fire service could advertise their free home fire safety check scheme at this point. They should be able to provide the alternative alarms for people with a hearing or sight disability.
Whatever the focus for this space is, the important point is to keep the space up-to-date so that it causes comment as the display changes from month to month. CAPT and RoSPA and similar organisations or your own home improvement service should be able to provide a variety of items for display, covering the main dangers for children. Twelve different displays in a calendar year on monthly basis could cover :
- Smoke alarms
- Safety gates for stairs, bedrooms or kitchens
- Window locks
- Finger-guards for doors
- Fireguards
- Clutter free stairs
- Testing bath water with the elbow
- Lockable cupboards for medicines in the kitchen, not the bathroom
- Filling in or fencing off ponds for children under 6
- Practising escape plans in the event of fire
- Warning labels and child resistant closures on household chemicals
- Lockable cupboards for all DIY and garden substances
6. “Home is where the harm is”
If you have not yet seen this DVD, it could be very useful for short reminder sessions with parents and carers in your community. It brings together real-life accidents with prevention methods that gives the group ideas to discuss. Having discussed a particular hazard one week, what changes have been brought about by the same families in their own home? How can these changes be passed on: word of mouth, newsletter, drawings by children, photographs of safety equipment being used correctly? This DVD is still available from the website (www.rospa.com/shop), by telephoning 0870 777 2227 or email : sales@rospa.com .
If you are now thinking there’s nothing new in all these ideas, we’ve done them for ages then good for you ! If, however, there is at least one you haven’t yet used then we hope you’ll give it a go in the year to come.
Have you new ideas which you would like to share? Please send them to me, Colin Morris, (cmorris@rospa.com) and we can publicise them throughout the UK.
Colin Morris
Regional Home Safety Manager (West of England)
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RoSPA is a registered charity: Registered Charity No: 207823 Patron: Her Majesty the Queen RoSPA Head Office: Edgbaston Park, 353 Bristol Road, Edgbaston, Birmingham B5 7ST, UK |
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