RoSPA Press Office : Press Release
April 6, 1999
LAUNCH OF NEW NATIONAL SAFETY EDUCATION PROJECT
Safety education schemes for children are to be the focus of a new project by The Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents.
Typically, such schemes operate by setting up general home scenes, for example, a kitchen or garden, and asking the children to spot the hazards and think of ways of making the environment safer.
The new project will be known as LASER - Learning About Safety by Experiencing Risk - and its aim is to look at the great variety of these safety initiatives which have sprung up across the country.
LASER will create a set of national guidelines to help evaluate and share their success.
Martin Gomberg, RoSPA Safety Education Adviser, said: "Across the country there are over one hundred similar schemes, including annual events, mobile units and permanent safety sites.
"Originally these schemes were aimed at school children, but this group has been expanded to include community groups. They encourage liaison between schools, communities, emergency services, health promotion and safety professionals.
"A great deal of effort is being put into these schemes in order to prevent accidents and yet there is no established good practice and evaluation methodology."
RoSPA is creating a new post for three years, to run the initiative, funded by the Department of Health. The project addresses issues raised in the Government Green Paper, Our Healthier Nation, which made accident prevention a priority.
LASER was created following a RoSPA seminar, Safety In Action, at which the 100 delegates identified an urgent need to establish guidance for these safety learning schemes.
The post will be advertised nationally on Saturday, April 17 and Tuesday, April 20.
