Safety is not a core value of our Saskatchewan culture. Injury prevention is not top of mind when our general public is at work, home or play. This needs to change.
To transform a culture, research has confirmed that behavioural modifications have to start at a young age - with children. Slowly, as this generation grows up - the new values grow up with them. Saskatchewan needs to change its perception of unintentional injuries. We need to call these injuries what they are - predictable, preventable and unnecessary.
Earlier this week, Safe Saskatchewan took a dramatic step towards influencing the young people of our province. We co-hosted a Safety Education Strategic Planning Workshop with the Saskatchewan Ministry of Education and WorkSafe Saskatchewan. We invited over 100 leaders from leading organizations, industry, business, government and special interest groups within the province and had 50 representatives in attendance. Our focus was on unintentional injury prevention supports and resources for the K-12 school system. Our purpose was to first examine the elementary school level and see how we could begin to incorporate broad injury prevention principles like risk assessment in support of the Saskatchewan curriculum.
From my experience with creation of the provincial Seniors' Falls Injury Prevention Strategy, I understand the road we are embarking on - the development and eventual execution of a provincial safety education strategy - will be a long, and tiresome iterative process. But I know it will be worth it - and now Saskatchewan stakeholders know it will be worth it too. The best and most successful strategies always demonstrate discipline when applying resources and time in the front end development. And so we work collaboratively together.
One of the key messages Safe Saskatchewan heard at this Workshop was that some key stakeholders are still missing from this collaborative undertaking. If you want to learn more about this development or you know of a key stakeholder who needs to be a part of this process, please contact me directly or email info@safesask.com.
This is the beginning of dramatic change in our province - and we need help in moving forward together.
How can you help our Mission:Zero quest to live injury-free?