The North Lincolnshire Council Road Safety Team is working to transform road safety for the youngest members of the community by introducing a graduated StreetSmart programme which incorporates a new exciting Early Years scheme.
Road safety is a shared responsibility, and North Lincolnshire’s Road Safety team wishes to support parents and partners and Early Years professionals, to deliver consistent road safety messages with outstanding resources.
The main character used in the campaign is Minnie, a black labrador puppet who visits Early Years settings delivering road safety messages in a K9 Interactive Puppet Experience.
An important element of the scheme acknowledges the huge benefit parents play in developing safe road users. North Lincolnshire Council is actively trying to engage and include parents and carers in this scheme, trailing the use of a comic strip to engage parents and carers with the Minnie story, to generate discussions, sharing the messages and individualising and personalising the story.
Comic strips are a great tool that promote accessibility to resources as they bridge language barriers. The graphics feature the dog with impressions of the owners to allow for visual personal interpretation.
Information for parents is also being piloted with Minnie Message Postcard designs to provide short snappy pointers and signpost further reading. This follows consultation with parents on how much time they have, to get a message across.
The scheme has been built around several pillars of good practice for young children using therapeutic puppets that allow children to experience situations in a safe environment and give them the chance check out and develop behaviours that are socially acceptable and safe habits.
Each story has an interactive story sack that creates and sustains interest. These bags of interesting items help tell the story and the children are invited up to help the character find the props – developing and improving social, communication, language and vocabulary skills. The children become part of the story, helping the characters to think critically about decisions and peer-on-peer learning as they share ideas.
Embedded in the scheme is behavioural change strategies endorsed by Road Safety GB that are central to initially helping people form a positive mindset to change. Children are encouraged to buy-in to the story with questions such as ‘hands up who rides in a car? Good you can all help Minnie as this story is about being safe riding in a car!’
The settings are offered the chance for any child wishing to have a selfie with the puppet to share with parents to again generate the discussion of why the puppet came and what was discussed. This has proven very popular with the children and parents. A sticker is given at the end of the session again as a pointer to remind children and parents of the visit.
North Lincolnshire Council has thanked their partner Safer Roads Humber for providing a grant from its small project fund to help purchase the puppet and some props to support this new scheme.
As the team continues to develop this through consultation with their partners and the collection of pre and post session evaluation data, it hopes to deliver an outstanding road safety package that stimulates increased focus on everyone getting home safe at the end of the day.
Image – North Lincolnshire Council