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The SafeStart scheme aims to increase the confidence and skills of parents and carers of babies, pre-school and Foundation Stage children. We cover the key safety issues for this age group including road safety, in car safety, fire safety, general home safety and basic first aid.
Our safety village with its realistic house and street scene enables parents and carers to learn about these issues in a non-threatening, fun, practical and relaxed format.
Full details of the visit arrangements follows below, and you can see details of the learning objectives and content in each scenario here. You can also download an infromation booklet in pdf format, or ask us to send you a printed version.
The visit is suitable for parents and expectant parents, family members and other carers of babies, pre-school and Foundation Stage children. It is not aimed at children themselves. We welcome parents and carers from Children’s Centres, Parent & Toddler Groups, Dad’s Groups, Playgroups, Nurseries, Day Care Groups or anywhere that parents or carers meet.
Why not get a group of parents or carers together and arrange a tour of our exciting safety village with one of our friendly and experienced Presenters?
Although the Every Child Matters initiative is under review by the coalition government, the objectives are still central to the aims and objectives of the SafeStart programme.
A SafeStart visit makes a valuable contribution to children being able to:-
Each visit takes two hours. Following an introduction, visitors are placed into small groups with a Presenter who will lead them around 6 scenarios of 15 minutes each.
The programme is aimed at adults with responsibility for children. We recognise child care can be a problem and so pre-school children are allowed to attend. However, this does detract from adult learning and so should be avoided if at all possible. There is also a charge for children who attend.
Please let us know on booking if any of your visitors have any special requirements such as mobility or sensory impairment and we will do our best to make adaptations. Please also let us know if some visitors have low levels of literacy or competency in English.
As we cover some potentially upsetting issues such as cot death, fire and road accidents, it would be helpful if you could tell us of any related negative experiences by your visitor group of which you are aware.
At least one visit organiser/ member of staff must be present throughout the visit to assist with group liaison. We are unable to provide language support and so if this is required visit organisers need to provide their visitors with this. However the visit is very visual and practical and so this is not too much of a problem.
If your group needs to bring young children, one option is for your group to provide staff to supervise them in a room which we can provide. Please discuss this with us at booking. We regret that we are currently unable to provide crèche facilities.
In order to maximise learning for adults, it is preferable that children do not attend. However, we do not wish this to prevent parents or carers attending the SafeStart programme. Therefore a room can be made available for your own staff to use for the supervision of the children whilst their parents and carers go on the tour.
We must emphasise that your staff are responsible for the children and not Safeside. As a last resort, children can accompany parents or carers on the tour but we do try to discourage this.
