Sharing Crucial Safety Messages

by Tania Russell-Owen | 15th Jun 2021

For a number of years the Meic helpline, ran by ProMo-Cymru, has been involved in Crucial Crew. This is an event that travels into schools to share important safety information with young people. This year, because of the Covid pandemic, this has been happening via live video streaming instead.

Crucial Crew is a network of multiple agencies, charities and organisations that deliver interactive PSE workshops in schools. The intention is to share important safety messages with Year 6 or Year 7 pupils. They reach 20,000 young people in Wales every year. Meic is one of a number of agencies invited to interact with young people in this way. Others include the Police, Food Standards Agency, Network Rail, and British Red Cross amongst many others. It’s a great opportunity to publicise and raise awareness of services and important messages.

Still image from Crucial Crew safety video. On the left a group of adults (teachers) talking, in the middle a Meic adviser by a desk in front of computer with headset on, on the right a young girl talking into microphone with word advocacy above her head.

Lockdown

Because of the lockdown, Crucial Crew sessions were not able to happen as usual last year. This year different arrangements were made so that the young people could still get this essential information. The sessions have been taking place via video link since schools reopened. Agencies travel to a central location and present their sessions to camera. This is then streamed live into the classrooms through Microsoft Teams. It is also possible to interact with the young people and allows them to ask any questions they may have.

The session

The Meic session has an emphasis on advocacy, and ensures that the young people are aware of their right to speak, and for their thoughts, views, opinions and wishes to be considered by professionals that are making decisions about their lives. We also tell them about the UNCRC to further inform them of their rights as a young person. We present a video that has been created especially for the Crucial Crew sessions by the ProMo-Cymru multimedia team. The video provides a scenario about advocacy and provides information about Meic, the services they offer and how to get in contact. The video is available in English or Welsh and is available on the Meic YouTube channel.

The Meic team are looking forward to the possibility of attending face to face Crucial Crew sessions before the summer holidays.

Further information

Find out more about Meic on our project pages. To keep up to date on Meic activities and blogs visit the website and follow on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram. Follow Crucial Crew on Twitter for information about their events. If you would like to learn more about the sessions we offer through Crucial Crew, or the Meic service contact dean@promo.cymru.