Youngsters who attend Charlie Caterpillar’s Day Nursery on Leamore Lane, Walsall, will be kept safer while out near roads following the donation of 30 high visibility vests.

 

[1] According to Government statistics, 11 children were killed and 231 were seriously injured while walking and cycling in the West Midlands in 2006.

Aware of the statistics Joanne Morgan and Lisa Spooner, directors of Charlie Caterpillar’s Day Nursery said:  “We didn’t have any means of our children being identified when we were out into our community, so we come up with the idea of using hi-vis vests for our local trips outdoors and daily school runs. Thankfully, we found financial support from SkyBlue, which has offices in the West Midlands and arranged the production and delivery of the vests for us.

“Before, we had no items of clothing for the children to wear but the SkyBlue vests add much- needed additional visibility and therefore security. We are aiming to go out once a month around the local community and use public transport. The vests will enable us able to keep the children safe making it easier for motorist and other pedestrians to see the children. We are now planning a visit to the Rough Wood near the nursery for our next trip.

“We also use the vests to escort the children to and from the school. Most schools have problems with parking so often we park a short distance and walk. The vests are perfect for us to walk the children safely back to the cars when we collect them. We use them on a daily basis, ” said Joanne Morgan. 

Chris Hall, branch manager for SkyBlue’s Birmingham Branch adds, “Health and safety is one of the driving forces of our business as a large proportion of our candidates are out on potentially hazardous assignments on the road doing maintenance work for clients including the Highways Agency and a number of county councils.

“We see our commitment to health and safety, not only in the way we do business, but also as one of the messages we want to communicate in the local community.

“We thought it was of great relevance to spread the importance of being safe on our streets to the younger generations”.

SkyBlue’s awareness and implementation of health and safety measures ensured the company collected a prestigious Values Award by construction company Carillion last July. The award was to honour their contribution in bringing the number of reportable accidents within the business in the last twelve months to zero.

 

 [1] Department for Transport statistics (obtained by road safety charity Brake in 2007) for pedestrian and cyclist casualties among under-16s in West Midlands, Warwickshire, West Midlands and Staffordshire in 2006.