We had marked the European Health and Safety Week for the previous two years, but decided to do something on a grander scale last year as four staff members were studying for their NVQ in Occupational Health and Safety Practice.
We have since submitted details of our week's experiences to the 'Health and Safety Week Feedback' and have now been told we are in with a good chance of being commended for our health and safety work.
The four NVQ students and myself formed a committee to organise the week's events. Our aim was to drive home important messages about fire safety to children, parents and nursery staff.
We discovered there is a year-long waiting list to have a real firefighter come to your nursery, so we asked the children to come dressed as firefighters and I headed for B&Q in search of a hose, which we then cut into manageable pieces for the children.
We encouraged the children to take on the role of firefighter and work through for themselves how fires start, how they would detect a fire, who they would call for help and how they would put the fire out. We backed this up with a frieze and display, and throughout stressed the importance of fire and firework safety. The project worked really well and the children talk about it even now.
For the parents, we designed and distributed leaflets on 'safety in the home' and 'car seat safety', and ran an emergency first aid course - attended by staff as well. Everyone received a certificate and the feedback was so positive, we are planning on running similar evening sessions.
Finally, a fire prevention officer spoke at a parents' evening about the importance of planning an escape route from your home in the event of a fire. It was a hard-hitting and thought-provoking talk, and the officer was pleased to reach so many parents at one time, as over 50 attended.
On the night we also had a quiz, testing parents on the safety leaflets that we had distributed. Their responses showed that they had done their 'homework'.
To make other staff members more aware about safety at work, we organised a health and safety crossword competition.
Committee staff learned a lot about planning events, but other staff, parents and children learned some important lessons, too - and of course the children just loved playing firefighters.
Inez Murray, manager at Four Seasons Nurseries, spoke to Ruth Thomson