Child on climbing frame

More than 2000 children around the world die every day from an accident which could have been prevented.

The Five Rs

There are five key stages involved in reducing the probability of unintended injury to yourself and others. The places where these are practiced and the hazard types will be different, but the process and stages are the same, and the critical thinking is transferable.

This is instinctive to adults in everyday situations. Children and young people, however, need to practice these reasoning skills in different, real situations to develop the knowledge, experience and competence which will make this instinctive for them too – in familiar, new and unusual situations.

The stages are:

It is important to be able to recognise the types of thing which may cause harm to you or others in different situations. This is about gaining knowledge and experience, being able to apply this from similar experiences, and developing the reasoning ability to imagine what might happen if...

Reasoned choices then need to be made about what risks might be posed by the identified hazards. If any of these are unacceptable, then they need to be removed or their potential impact reduced to an acceptable level. When deciding what action to take, it is important to take into account the benefits of the particular activity and weigh these up against the likelihood and severity of the risks involved.

If an incident or injury does happen, it is important that you know how to recover from this. Working out how to get to safety, and learning basic first response and first aid are very useful skills, and can reduce further harm to yourself and others. Remembering lessons learned from positive, negative or near miss experiences is also a vital part of this ongoing process, allowing future actions to be informed by past experiences.