Creating a Culture of Safety
Creating a Culture of Safety. keeping children safe is only partly about policies and rules, and oversight. Those things are important. But most important of all, this is about staff, the people who work directly with children and families. Those people must be supported with opportunities for reflection, professional development, chances to think about the work they do and why that work is so important. What is challenging in that work, and what comes to them easily. It’s the ability of programs to recognize and analyze challenging conditions and be able to make improvements. Programs must make sure that staff have that sense of commitment and responsibility, and that they have the ability to ensure children are thriving is critical. They have to help make sure staff remember why we do the work, to be curious about children’s interests, needs, and ideas, to have the opportunity to be creative, to enjoy children and each other’s humor every day. These things, in addition to the policies and procedures, will allow staff to be fully present with children. Adults who can be fully present will keep children physically and emotionally safe and thriving.
The first step to doing this is to create a culture of safety. In this context, culture means the set of shared attitudes, values, goals, and practices that characterize a program; the way things work in that program and in that community. Experts and researchers have demonstrated that the culture of an organization plays a key role in all successful safety initiatives.
