Child Farm Safety Week 2022 – Keep your children safe on our farms

This week is Child Farm Safety Week in Northern Ireland, and we have checked in with the Agri-Team at HSENI to look at their ‘Be Aware Kids' campaign which is part of HSENI's commitment to eliminating fatal accidents and serious injuries on Northern Ireland's farms.

The farm can be a place of great fun and excitement for children, but it can also be an extremely dangerous environment, so keeping children safe on our farms must remain a priority. 

“HSENI would encourage your children to enjoy the farm! There are plenty of things that children can do to help out and these are excellent life skills for the future but REMEMBER, this is wholly dependent on the child’s age and maturity. Parents MUST be very mindful of this and ensure children of all ages are adequately supervised on the farm at all times. Children must also never be carried on agricultural vehicles or machinery during work activities until they are aged 13 years or over."
Camilla Mackey, Head of the Agri-Team at HSENI 

Below we look at the parent checklist for preventing accidents and we all know it's the basic common sense practice we like to enforce on our farms every day but sometimes a little reminder helps us to tighten up on some of the things that have slipped.

Farm safety checklist for parents in preventing accidents:

► Have a safe and secure play area for young children
► Prevent children from playing in or around farmyards and livestock
► Make sure your vehicles have good all-round visibility
► Restrict the use of the quad and provide suitable safety equipment
► Secure all heavy wheels, gates, heavy equipment, and stacked materials to prevent them from toppling over
► Ensure your slurry lagoon is securely fenced to prevent children from gaining access and make sure tank covers are always in place 
►Always keep children well away when mixing slurry
►Keep track of where family members are playing or working and when they are expected back 
► Make sure everyone washes their hands before eating and drinking 
►Keep chemicals locked in a secure store when not in use
►Make sure that guards are in place to prevent access to dangerous parts of machinery
►Make sure all family members know what to do in an emergency 
►Prepare a list of emergency contact telephone numbers

 Prevent all children under 13 years from riding on tractors and farm machinery.

By law* any child aged 13 and over can, with appropriate permission and supervision, drive a tractor engaged in agricultural activities on private land in Northern Ireland, providing they hold a nationally recognised certificate of competence in the safe driving and operation of tractors. The certificate of competence can be obtained by completing a relevant machinery course such as a LANTRA certified course. More details area available here 

'Avoid Harm on the Farm’ poster competition

The HSENI ‘Avoid Harm on the Farm’ poster competition is an ideal way for parents to remind their children about how to stay safe on the farm. Help your children identify dangers such as tractors and machinery, silage harvesting and slurry operations, for example, and illustrate in a poster their ideas on farm safety.  The competition will run from 1st June 2022 to 30th June 2022. Information on the poster competition can be found here

Additional resources

► The Farm Safety Foundation has also produced a guidance document aimed at the parents of children who live on farms. It contains lots of excellent farm safety advice, Staying Safe On the Farm- A guide for parents-yellowwellies.org.

► Screen time is always something to be monitored in every house so how about combining screen time with something educational for our little farmers?

► Check out the 'Farm Secure' - a farm safety app for children Sponsored by the Farm Safety Partnership (FSP) the free app is aimed at primary school children and features videos and an interactive quiz. Download it here 

► HSENI Dangerous Playgrounds 4 to 8 yr olds

► HSENI Farm Safe 8 to 11 yr olds

► Additional resources are available for parents and teachers for both Key Stage 1 and 2 here 

Tragically, fatal accidents involving children on farms have been all too common on Northern Ireland farms over many years. To date, the ‘Be Aware Kids' campaign has seen a significant reduction in accidents involving children. However, we must never be complacent to ensure that this positive trend continues.

Notes & Acknowledgments

The ‘Be Aware Kids – child safety on farms’ campaign is the largest initiative in NI to engage with children on the issue of farm safety. The programme has been running since 1999 and is extremely well known in the farming industry. This initiative includes the annual ‘Avoid Harm on the Farm’ Poster Competition, which has been running since 2003. 
The Farm Safety Partnership comprises the Health and Safety Executive for Northern Ireland (HSENI), the Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs (DAERA), the Ulster Farmers’ Union (UFU), NFU Mutual (NFUM), the Young Farmers’ Clubs of Ulster (YFCU), The Farm Safety Foundation (FSF), and the Northern Ireland Agricultural Producers Association (NIAPA). It is tasked with assisting Northern Ireland’s farming community to work safely and tackle the problem of work-related fatalities and injuries on farms.
The Health and Safety Executive for Northern Ireland (HSENI) is an Executive Non-Departmental Public Body, sponsored by the Department for the Economy (DfE).
HSENI is the lead body responsible for the promotion and enforcement of health and safety at work standards in Northern Ireland.