You have to engage on their level, start stating Health and Safety at Work Act and banging on about regs and you've most likely lost them. Say its about "Taking care of yourself and others, and we call it health and safety" and I think they will better grasp the idea.

Sounds challenging but, ultimately could be very rewarding - if you can get them to engage. I would also suggest lots of visual prompts and perhaps utilise games and role-play.

Good luck to your colleague!

I'm not sure if fire safety is something you will touch upon- when I do open days volunteering with the fire service, we have a set up of a bedroom and a kitchen with some hazards in them. We then get the kids to point out what the hazard is and why its a hazard- the amount of parents who get dropped in it when their kids say about the straighteners being left on the bed  or phones being put on charge under pillows!

Originally Posted by: biker1

If you can get your hands on it, a safety video from some years ago called 'No Going Back' can be useful. It's about an accident suffered by a singer in a band, so would appeal to the X Factor generation.

That's part of the IOSH MS pack training materials, the lead is played by Kate Beckinsale (her dad of the famous Porridge comedy and Hollywood actress)

It's so old looking now though.....

I have been involved in something similar and used balloons to bring interst to the session. I had some of the youngsters either blowing them up or holding inflated balloons

The full involvement of the youngsters is up to you, but whilst blowing up the balloon (one or two breaths at a time, then stopping for a chat) I covered things like substances causing injury - using balloon latex as the starting point then talking about other substances that they might know) then talking about who could and could not blow up a balloon, leading onto "competence" and the need to be sure that everyone was trained and or able to do the tasks they were asked to do, then after another couple of breaths (and some acting) talked about feeling dizzy and hence a disussion about first aid and the need to have the right bits in place in the first aid kit - all the time bringing the risk assessment threads together. Ultimately talking about creating a set of rules that make work safe (Safe policy and arrangements)

Depending on the time you have you can weave in lost of things about colour of the balloon, and how that colour might feature in signage, etc etc.

At the end of the session (depending on numbers) everyone or around 6 or 7 folk would have inflated balloons - now get one to burst a balloon and ask them to gauge the noise , then get 2 to burst at the same time, then the rest - ( i used sitting on them, not quite as co-ordinated as a pin might be, but much more fun for youngsters) and that allowed me to finish off talking about noise and vibration with a partticular reference to the desire of youngsters to play loud music via headphones (quick life lesson there too).

The blowing up of the balloons held their attention and the bursting of them certainly made them remember the session.

The important thing is that if needs to be interactive and fun for them and you !!

Enjoy and let us all know how you get on

Napo isn't bad - & there is a reasonable teachers pack complete with a brightly coloured spot the hazards poster.