Safer strangers, safer buildings code
If you get lost, or feel unsafe, and there is no adult around that you know and trust, look for a safer stranger who you can ask for help. If you can’t see a safer stranger outside, look for a safer building you can go in to, to ask for help from the people who work there.
A safer stranger is a person who is working at their job which helps people. Safer strangers will usually be wearing a uniform. Safer strangers could be police officers, police community support officers, traffic wardens, shopkeepers, check-out assistants, paramedics and others.
Safer buildings could be banks, post offices, libraries, medical centres, shops, supermarkets, leisure centres and others.
Tell the safer stranger your name. Also, if you can, tell them the phone number of your parent or the person who looks after you.
Things to talk about with your child
The
Safer strangers, safer buildings code can be used in two ways:
1. As an emergency strategy by children of all ages if they get separated when out with parents or carers.
2. It can also be used to talk about with older children when they get to the stage of going out, perhaps with friends, without an adult, in case they should ever feel unsafe and need help.
Watch the
Teigan gets lost film
www.childseyemedia.com/safety.html with your child(ren), and talk together about the
safer strangers and
safer buildings in your area.
Strangers
A stranger can be described as
someone that we don’t know or someone that we don’t know well. You can say that because we don’t know the person we don’t know whether they are kind or not. Most people are kind but there are a small number of people who are not. We cannot tell who is kind just by looking at them. We must never go anywhere with a stranger or do anything for a stranger. It doesn’t matter what they say to us, we should always tell the grown-up who looks after us if a stranger talks to us.
Safer strangers
Ask your child(ren) if they can think of any
safer strangers. You can say that even though these people are often strangers we call them
safer strangers because they are doing a job where they help us and it is easy to recognize them because of their uniform.
Say that if your child(ren) can’t see a safer stranger outside, they should look for a safer building to go into, to ask for help inside from the people who work there.
Safer buildings
You can say that
safer strangers can be found in
safer buildings and that there are many where we live. A
safer building is one where often there will be a
reception desk and there will be someone there to help you. If a child needs help, hopefully they will be quite close to a community facility of this kind, and it will be safe for them to go there.
Walkabouts
Help your child come to assimilate the
Safer strangers, safer buildings code gradually, so that it eventually becomes ‘second nature’. Talk about it in a low-key, matter-of-fact way, whenever the opportunity arises naturally.
Go on lots of walkabouts together in your neighbourhood, chatting about the
safer strangers and
safer buildings on the way, so that your child gets to know your locality and feels confident and at ease. Talk about how they might put the code into practice. For example, if they get lost in a shopping centre, talk about how they could go into a shop and find the uniformed person at the till. If they are in a cinema, they should go to the ticket office to ask for help.
When you judge the time is right for your child, let them walk short distances with friends, to begin with. Gradually extend the routes and areas, going on ‘dummy runs’ together first.
When your child is ready, you could talk together about what they understand by the meaning of the words ‘trustworthy’ and ‘responsible’.
Using the phrase stranger danger
The phrase
stranger danger can make children fearful of all strangers. This means that if they get lost or feel unsafe, they would not know who they could turn to for help. The phrase
safer strangers, safer buildings is a positive alternative, giving children an immediate strategy.
Further information, guidance and resources
With your child(ren), visit the ‘Am I safe?’ section of the ‘Welltown’ website. In this interactive story, two girls, Lucy and Jemma, get lost. They tell a shopkeeper, who calls their mother and, at the end of the story, the girls are praised because, very sensibly, they had looked for a
responsible person to tell.
CSEF aims to help deliver preventative safety education to every child in the United Kingdom by:
Ensuring all children and their carers have access to high quality safety education
Educating young people, parents and teachers about preventative safety through all available channels
Highlighting and progressing issues of child safety
CSEF publishes a range of resources for children from Key Stage 1 to 3, parents, carers and teachers. CSEF’s workbooks offer child-friendly advice and are designed to address key elements of a child’s personal, social, health and citizenship education.
CSEF’s resources are available from their website.
Suzy Lamplugh Trust aims to provide practical support and guidance to reduce people’s fear of crime, and to develop skills and strategies for keeping themselves safe.
Resources to help children develop the skills of safe independence include:
Downloadable guidance sheets, including
Travelling safely to and from school
Think safety leaflet (7-12 years) – from online shop
Topics include:
-
safe places
- getting home safely
- strangers
- using the Internet and mobile phones safely
Teach Safety – a new multimedia personal safety resource for primary schools (click onto
www.suzylamplugh.org for full details.)
Smart Kids - free online animation and game
www.suzylamplugh.org/smartkids
In this animation and game, George explains about the safe places on his journey to and from school, where there are people he can ask for help, if he needs to.
Kidscape is committed to keeping children safe. With the help of parents, carers, teachers, police and other caring professionals, children are taught ways to deal with: bullies; good sense defence; approaches by strangers and even by known adults who may try to harm them.
Kidscape offers a Helpline for parents of children being bullied; publications; child safety training to prevent bullying and abuse; confidence-building sessions and advice and information-sharing with other caring organizations.
The Kidscape website offers extensive advice for children, parents and professionals, including downloadable booklets and FAQs about bullying and child safety.
Downloadable leaflets include:
-
Keeping Young Children Safe
- Keep them safe
- The Keepsafe Code
- Keepsafe Extra
- Good Sense Defence for the Young (from Kidscape Head Office)
An invaluable and reassuring book of short, illustrated stories is
Feeling Happy, Feeling Safe, by Michelle Elliott, Director of Kidscape. This includes the story
Getting Lost, in addition to
Feeling Safe; Say No; Bullies; Someone You Don’t Know; Touching, and
Secrets. The book also includes the Kidscape Keepsafe Code. The book is published by the Communication Directorate and may be purchased online from the Kidscape shop.
Work in schools
Some children are now being taught how to stay safe through special lessons at school conducted by police Youth and Community Liaison Officers, such as P.C. Helena in the
Teigan gets lost film. Charities such as Kidscape and Suzy Lamplugh Trust, as well as ‘Crucial Crew’ teams
www.crucial-crew.org, also run workshops where children are presented with challenging situations in role-play, and are taught a
safety plan.
This involves children learning how to pay attention to any ‘funny feelings’ (e.g. heart beating faster, stomach ‘turning over’, etc.), which are telling the children that something is wrong. They also learn the ‘Yell, Run, Tell’ code, devised by Kidscape. If a child feels scared or uncomfortable, they should shout loudly (e.g. ‘Help! Stranger!’) and not just scream, in case people think they are only playing. They should get away as quickly as possible and find a
safer stranger, or go inside a
safer building and tell the
safer stranger(s) there what has happened.
