Keeping Children Safe - Look, Think, Act Campaign

Let’s keep children safe by raising awareness of how, and why, they could leave a childcare setting without a responsible adult

As we begin the new term, it’s a good time to remind all early learning and childcare services to be aware of how and why children could potentially leave a setting without staff or a parent/carer.

It is everyone’s responsibility to keep children safe, so ensure you know where your children are at all times. It is important that staff teams work well together, communicate effectively and have a shared understanding of roles and responsibilities to keep children safe. Even when busy with other activities we all need to be alert to what children are doing. It is especially important at pick up and drop off times and when outdoors or on outings. Review your procedures and identify where improvements might be needed. Review the security of your setting, are all doors, gates and perimeters secure. Most importantly are all children fully engaged in their activities and secure in their relationships with the staff. Think about how well you support all of your children to have fun and be confident in your setting.

To help you with this task, we want to introduce Simoa, the elephant, to all ELC settings. Let’s raise awareness and act responsibly to safeguard, protect and support children’s wellbeing.

Simoa always remembers:

Safe
Be alert to all potential risks in your setting.

Inspect
Look around and inspect the environment to make sure a child can’t leave an area without staff or their parent/carer.

Monitor
Regularly check that all children are accounted for particularly when they are outside, on outings or using transport.

Observe
Observe children and think about their feelings and emotional security – use these observations to support children to feel loved and secure. 

Act
Assess and take action to keep children safe.

All services are required to notify the Care Inspectorate of any incidents, so that we can all share the learning and keep children safe. We want to engage with services to reduce and prevent occurrences of children being in unsafe situations.

If you would like to share this message with staff and parents in your setting you can download our posters and graphics from the links below:

• SIMOA poster
• SIMOA artwork
• Look, Think, Act – broken fence graphic
• Look, Think, Act – left on the bus graphic
• Look, Think, Act – open gate graphic
• Look, Think, Act – play park graphic