Over 2,000 children from Caerphilly county borough’s primary schools are receiving important lessons in safety, crime and health at this year’s Crucial Crew events.
The Crucial Crew programme aims to educate children aged ten and eleven on how to keep themselves safe and how to react in certain situations by tackling the everyday dangers they may encounter.
Featuring theatre-style, interactive scenarios to help pupils learn about the importance of safety, the events are being held at the ‘Safety Zone’ in Treforest.
Scenarios include a street with a corner shop, a police station, forestry, electricity sub-station, pub, building site, pedestrian crossing, first aid and a firehouse.
Year 6 pupils will attend for either a morning or afternoon session, working their way around the ten scenarios with ten-minute practical sessions covering safety messages in each of the exhibits.
This will include advice around underage drinking and anti-social behaviour, road safety, substance misuse awareness, fire safety messages, first aid, wildlife and conservation issues.
Cllr Rob Gough, Cabinet Member for Public Protection, Engineering and Transport said, “Crucial Crew is an important, high-impact event that promotes safety in our communities. It teaches children who are about to move onto secondary school how to keep safe while out playing, how to stop danger and how to react when something goes wrong”.
He continued, “I am sure that as with previous years, this will be an interesting and worthwhile experience for all involved”.
The workshops are lively, interactive sessions with real front-line members of the emergency services and associated organisations. These include Gwent Police, Caerphilly County Borough Council, Capita Symonds Road Safety, British Red Cross, Drugaid, Forestry Commission, South Wales Fire and Rescue Service, Western Power and representatives from the building trade.
Officers from Caerphilly County Borough Council will also be talking to the pupils about age-restricted goods in a purpose built shop. The children will be asked to take a range of items from the shelves including alcohol, tobacco and solvent based products in order to engage them in a discussion on what products they can and cannot buy according to their age.
The events also encourage crime prevention and raise awareness about issues such as how to stay safe on the Internet, as well as raising awareness about the consequences of bad behaviour in the community.
At the end of the event, the children will each also receive a workbook, consisting of puzzles, word searches, quizzes and information on everything they encounter on their visit to Crucial Crew.
In previous years, teachers have commented on how important this workbook is as a tool in their curriculum that can be used as a follow up to Crucial Crew, ensuring that important messages are not lost.
Crucial Crew is taking place at the Treforest Safety Zone, a 10,000 sq. ft. factory unit based on the Treforest Industrial Estate in Rhondda Cynon Taf.
