Building on the successes of last year's campaign, the Accident Prevention Steering Group and Children & Young Peoples Group promoted key child safety messages to parents and child carers within the Telford Town Shopping Centre for one day on 23rd June 2008.
Information and advice was made available at several stands and displays in the shopping centre, on the simple steps and changes that individuals can make to keep children safe. A range of accident prevention leaflets and poster displays were available and representatives from the various agencies were on hand to answer any questions. Among the topics covered were: pushchair information; fire safety – fitting smoke alarms and home safety checks; general home safety; safe medicines; sun safety; safe bed sharing; burns & scalds; and drugs & alcohol.
In support of this years event Shropshire Fire and Rescue hosted a QUIZDOM challenge, where members of the general public visiting Telford Town Centre were invited to take part in an interactive quiz testing their knowledge of the key child safety messages. Five rounds of the quiz were delivered on the day by Lynn Hosking, the Brigade's Youth Officer and Chair of the Accident Prevention Steering Group.
A total of 50 people took part and the quiz proved useful in identifying gaps in existing child safety knowledge. Sun Safety was identified as a topic area where people struggled to answer the questions correctly, whilst the correct answers on the safe storage of medicines and pedestrian safety were high. It is planned that the quiz will be used in future to inform agencies of the topic areas for further promotion and inform the development of more targeted campaign work.
Visitors to the stands were also asked to comment on any changes that they would make as a result of the information made available to them. The feedback recorded on the entry forms was very positive with 60% of respondents stating that they would make a change as a result of the information that they had seen on the day.
