FARM SAFETY

Farms are exciting places for children to live, grow, explore and visit. However they can also provide unique environments and injury hazards. Farms typically combine the family home and an industrial workplace, which means children are exposed to a wide range of hazards that aren’t present in urban home environment.

Common injury hazards for children on farms include machinery, vehicles (e.g. tractors, motorbikes and quad bikes), animals, water hazards (e.g. dams, rivers, creeks and animal drinking troughs) and poisons (e.g. pesticides).

Children in inner and outer regional areas of Victoria experience higher rates of death, hospital admission and emergency department presentation due to unintentional injuries compared to children in major cities in Victoria.

Safe Play Areas

A fenced area away from water, machinery and other hazards is a great way to provide children with a safe place to play on a farm. A safe play area should:

• • Be close to the home and clearly visible
• • Be securely fenced
• • Have adequate shade as well as a range of fun and interesting things for children to do

For more information on preventing farm injuries, please access the resources below.

FARM SAFETY CREATIVE COMPETITION

Kidsafe Victoria’s ‘Farm Safety Creative Competition’ has returned for 2021! The competition provides an opportunity to engage Victorian primary school children to learn and discuss farm safety issues in a fun and engaging way.

Children from across Victoria are invited to unleash their creativity and design educational farm safety materials and messaging based on this year’s theme – Think Farm Safe, Be Farm Safe. This year’s theme centres around encouraging children to take the time to stop and think about the potential injury hazards that exist on farms and to ensure that safety is kept front of mind at all times in the farm environment.

The winning entries will be utilised to form the basis of a farm safety education campaign targeting Victorian parents and carers with important information on farm safety.

Along with great prizes available for winning students, we are also offering a $100 RHSports voucher for the first 50 schools that enter the competition!

How to enter:

• • Download the Teacher’s Pack or Parent’s Pack at the links below – these contain all competition details as well as farm safety learning sessions and resources to assist you to focus on farm safety in the classroom or at home.
• • Register for updates and reminders for the competition through the form below.
• • Get students to create their individual, group or class entry based on the theme, “Think Farm Safe, Be Farm Safe”.
• • Submit the entry along with a completed entry form to info@kidsafevic.com.au by Friday 5th November 2021.

Check out the great winning entries from our 2020 competition here.

The Farm Safety Creative Competition is proudly supported by the Victorian Government’s Smarter, Safer Farms Program.