New Canadian Red Cross Safety Resource: Be Safe! Safety Kit

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Be Safe! Is a personal safety program, designed for children aged five to nine, offered through the Red Cross.  It comprises a collection of dynamic educational resources designed to provide educators with tools to promote personal safety and to help children protect themselves from abuse.

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The course is free.  In order to enroll, it is necessary to create an account (no charge) and take the pre-requisite course (also free) Introduction to RespectED.

  • Introduction to RespectED: Violence & Abuse Prevention the online module is an introduction to all RespectED courses and takes approximately 30 minutes to complete.  The module provides general information about the Canadian Red Cross, the International Red Cross and Red Crescent movement, and the RespectED: Violence & Abuse Prevention Program.
  • Be Safe!  Focuses on healthy relationships and child sexual abuse prevention.  In 8 lessons, Be Safe!  Introduces children to their rights, reinforces healthy relationships, helps them identify safe and unsafe touching, and teaches the simple and effective personal safety rules: Say “NO!” GO! TELL.  Be Safe! has a simple, powerful goal: to let children know they have a right to be safe and provide the steps to get help if they need it.
  • The course identifies the benchmarks of a healthy relationship, including trust, respect, independence, safety, sharing, communication and fairness and emphasizes the value of developing healthy relationships in early childhood as a critical life skill.

The eight lessons of the course for children include:

  1. Children have rights
  2. Who are safe friends and adults?
  3. Everyone has a body
  4. What is private? and What is public?
  5. Your body is yours!
  6. Touching can be safe or unsafe
  7. Secrets can be safe or unsafe
  8. Say “NO!” Go! Tell!

The interactive lessons are supplemented by conversations with Trusty the Puppet and by the use of songs (“My Body” by Peter Alsop and 3 songs by Charlotte Diamond).

The Be Safe! Course offers educators the latest information on how to communicate the subject matter effectively, including best practices to handle disclosures.  The course materials include a link to the Canadian Red Cross online pdf resource, Ten Steps to Creating Safe Environments, a tool to assist organizations and communities to help in the development, implementation and monitoring of concrete actions to prevent, reduce, mitigate and respond to interpersonal violence – physical, sexual, emotional and neglect.  Each of the ten steps is designed as part of an interconnected process to reduce the risk of violence and increase protection.

The ten steps include:

  1. Understand the problem
  2. Recognize people’s vulnerability and resilience
  3. Define protection instruments
  4. Create a prevention team
  5. Complete a risk assessment
  6. Develop policies and procedures
  7. Educate adults, youth and children
  8. Respond to disclosures of violence
  9. Meet the challenges
  10. Maintain safe environments

A bilingual kit, designed to incorporate cultural and family diversity, and to support educators in delivering the program in a positive, child-friendly and non-threatening way, is available for purchase to support classroom use of the program with children.

Contents include:

  • 1 cardboard carry case with handle
  • 32 colour lesson cards, along with a black and white poster illustrating the private parts of the body
  • 1 Trusty mascot fleece hand puppet, 60 cm tall
  • 1 Your Body is Yours! Children’s book (72 pages, colour photos)
  • 1 Be Safe! Song CD featuring Charoltte Diamond, with English, French and instrumental tracks
  • 1 Be Safe! Quick Start Guide, including parent/guardian communication templates and tools (102 pages, colour photos)
  • 60 Keeping Our Kids Safe booklets for parents (31 pages, colour photos)
  • 60 Trusty sticker sheets (7 full-colour stickers per sheet)
  • 1 Say, “NO!” Go! Tell! colour poster
  • 1 UN Convention on the Rights of the Child colour poster
  • 1 Access to the Be Safe! Training for Educators online course (this course offers additional resources for download, including the Be Safe! Resource Guide)

To access additional information and the kit, visit these websites: Parachute Canada Redcross Online Learning

 

 

Injury Prevention, National PrioritiesGuest User