How Shropshire Fire & Rescue Raise Water Safety Awareness with Widgit Symbols

Last year, Shropshire Fire & Rescue Service ran a t-week water safety campaign with a range of community events, one of the which was a ‘Keeping Safe with the Fire Service’ activity for a group of young people with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND). We asked what communication would work best and found that Widgit would help support their communication and engagement with the session. We looked for a version of the Water Safety Code using symbols but could not find one, so we contacted Severndale Academy’s Communications Lead Gareth Smith who helped us to create a special resource using Widgit Symbols.

From a day-to-day perspective, the resources are used at water safety community events, including fire station open days and school visits, and have all been well received by parents, carers, teachers and speech therapists. In addition, we have delivered water and fire safety sessions at local day services and more recently at Crucial Crew in Shrewsbury and Bridgnorth, where Year 6 primary school children receive social awareness and safety training.

Since using it locally in our community, I was asked to present at the National Fire Chiefs Council (NFCC) Water Safety Practitioner Group meeting where other fire services requested that the resources be made widely available. Following this meeting, the resources were uploaded to the StayWise website, a repository of safety information for all to use. RNLI are looking to translate them into Welsh for StayWise Cymru.

Finally, I was also asked to present the resources by NFCC at the RoSPA National Water Safety Conference, which further promoted water safety and why symbolised communication is important to convey vital information for those with communication difficulties, including those for whom English is an additional language (EAL).

When working with those in our community who use symbol communication, the water safety messages have proven more accessible and have supported their learning. We have noted that engagement at events with our Widgit symbolised resource for water safety has increased, and we have had positive feedback. The Widgit water safety resources continue to be downloaded from our fire service links to the StayWise website.

I have recently been contacted by our local Designated Clinical Officer for SEND and have collaborated with them and our SEND Local Offer Lead to share the resources, which have been included in the Shropshire SEND Local Offer newsletter; this goes out to parent carers of children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities, as well as professionals.

Widgit Online supports teachers, parents and professionals to support learning and communication, which is vital for life-saving safety community prevention information in making these messages more accessible. I would highly recommend Widgit to other organisations, particularly those involved in prevention work, when creating vital safety messages for the public and making these more accessible.

From the work on water safety and presentations I have given using Widgit Symbols, road safety practitioners have expressed interest in gathering a set of symbol resources to make available in a similar way. This is an area that I am supporting, along with colleagues in other services, so watch this space!