Six steps to safety

Here are some steps that it’s worth making time for, to make sure you get the most from your Child Safety Week.
1 - Use our ‘Make time for safety’ theme
2 - Set SMART goals
3 - Plan Logistics
4 - Communicate
5 - Evaluate your impact
6 - Tell us what you’ve achieved

Step 1 - Use the ‘make time for safety’ theme

Think about fun ways of using the theme in your setting. Could children and parents paint a huge safety clock in your ’stay and play’ session and stick on prevention pictures, drawn by the children, for each time of day? Or play ’safety against the clock’ with groups of parents or children. Draw a house on the board, set the clock and point out a room. Get the parents and children to shout out all the hazards they can think of in one minute. Use the list to have a more in depth discussion about how to prevent each risk.

Encourage parents to decide exactly when they are going to take action. For example - getting safety catches on Saturday morning and then fitting them that day, checking what’s stored under the sink when they get home, practising the fire escape route with the family on Sunday morning after breakfast.

Don’t forget to check out the quizzes and competitions in the Downloads section. They are a smiple way to engage parents and families so that they learn and have fun at the same time.

Step 2 - Set SMART goals

SMART = Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Timely

Think about the parents and families you can reach. What are the key injury issues for the children? Visit the Parents section of the website or speak to colleagues or partner organisations to find out which serious accidents top their list of concerns. Be specific about who you are targetting and what you want them to do differently.

What would you like parents and families to do or change as a result of your activities? What practical prevention measures would you like them to adopt? What is likely to motivate them?

Thinking more broadly, what are the benefits to your organisation or your work?

Write down the most important things you would like to see at the end of your Child Safety Week activity.

Step 3 - Plan logistics

Keep returning to your original goals to keep a check on where you are heading and to make sure they are achievable. You can update them if not. It’s easier to focus if everyone is clear about what you are trying to achieve.

Take your goals and think about the resources you have yourself or within your orgnisation. Do you need to get approval from anyone in your organisation? Do you need to make a case for a budget to buy resources? Do you need to book a venue or hire equipment?

Are there people who can support you - this could be colleagues or other local organisations or businesses. Check out the Partnerships section for ideas on who may be able to help.

Step 4 - Communicate

With your partners: if you need support from colleagues, managers or potential partner organisations, bring them in as early as possible so they feel involved and are able to help you plan. Put Child Safety Week onto the agenda for your team meeting. Why not pick up the phone? You may be surprised how many people have Child Safety Week in their calendar. It may be helpful to write out a plan of your thinking and email it to your contacts with a request for support. Think about the benefits they might get from being involved.

With parents and families: communicate your plans with the people you are trying to reach. Use the ‘make time for safety’ theme to encourage parents to put the event into their diary. Make use of the Child Safety Week poster to draw attention to your activity or as a simple way to get parents to take some action and visit the website. If you want to promote your event more widely, put notices on public boards, in newsletters, on local websites etc. You can also promote your activity through local businesses or partner organisations - even if they just promote it to their staff via their intranet or decide to help out with some freebies or funding.

With your local media: local papers, radio stations, magazines, websites or TV are great ways to get your message out as widely as possible. Decide what the key messages are for media. This might be information about he numbers of children harmed by accidents as reported by your local hospital, information about your event or motivating messages highlighting how easy most accidents are to prevent and giving adivce on what to do.

Use the Child Safety Week template press reelase, available from the Downloads section in May, to help you build your story. Have a local spokesperson ready to speak to the press. If you can supply them with statistics on the numbers of children harmed locally by accidents this will help make your story stronger. Think about inviting a local VIP, such as the MP, Mayor or other public figure, to your event and tell journalists. Let journalists know if there are photo opportunities but remember to get consent from parents if children are involved. Look out for the Consent form in the Downloads section.

With us: Before your activity, please take some time to fill in the ‘My activity’ form on the Downloads section of the website. We’d love to hear what you’re planning.

Step 5 - Evaluate your impact

It’s relatively easy (and very important!) to measure how many people attent your event, how many partner organisations get involved or how much local publicity you generate. But how will you measure if you’ve had an impact? How will you know if children, parents and grandparents learn something new or do something differently as a result of Child Safety Week?

As budgets become increasingly tight, it becomes more and more important to demonstrate that your work has real impact. And it gives a huge sense of personal satisfaction if you can show how you’ve helped make children safer from serious accidents.

So what will sucess look like? Take your goals and think about how you will measure them. Trying to measure behaviour change scientifically can be complex and take lots of time. But you CAN

• count how many people sign up to have free safety equipment fitted - things like smoke alarms, safety gates and fireguards that are proven to keep children safe
• ask people if they have learnt anything new. You could include this as part of a discussion session, using our quizzes to check out what people know and then asking workers, volunteers and parents to call out one thing they learnt that surprised them
• look and see what changes people have made - these could be one-off changes like buying and fitting a cupboard lock, or changes in routine like driving more slowly when dropping off children at your nursery.
• ask people what they will do as a result of your activity. One way of helping people to make changes is to get them to picture the change they will make and then get them to either draw it or write it down, being specific about ‘when’ and ‘how’
• if you have the opportunity to follow up with parents or children after the event, you can ask them what they remember and if they have taken any action

Step 6 - Tell us what you’ve achieved

Don’t forget to tell us all about your Child Safety Week and what families have learnt or done as a result. Your feedback helps us to improve the support we can offer you. And it also helps us prove to our supporters that their funding was well spent - so that we can provide free resources to you next year too! Fill in the evaluation form from the Downloads section. We would welcome any photos of yoru event. They are a great way to spark interest in Child Safety Week and to tell the story of your work. If your photos feature children, we must have a copy of the Consent form before we can use them. You can find this in the Downloads section.