The death of a child is always tragic. If the cause of death is an avoidable accident, it is doubly so. Too many children are dying on Irish farms. In addition, children are being injured, maimed, and bruised.
There is risk attached every time we climb out of bed in the morning, and we cannot ever hope to eliminate all farm accidents. However, we all need to adopt some basic first principles to minimise and manage risk.
In 2010, the Health and Safety Authority (HSA) introduced a code of practice in relation to preventing accidents to children in agriculture. It sets out a wide range of effective and mostly simple measures to manage risk where children are on farms. Every farm family should have a copy.
Every aspect of farm safety for children is covered. Approaching the issue all at once can be overwhelming, but the HSA has broken it down into a number of sections, which makes tackling safety more manageable. These include:
Supervision, instruction and training.General principles of health and safety management. Play areas for children not involved in work activities. Operating and riding on machinery. Contact with machinery and moving vehicles. Contact with animals. Drowning and asphyxiation. Hazardous substances. Falling from heights. Being hit by a falling object. Fire.As a father of three boys living on a farm, I am fully aware of how difficult it is to strike a balance between protecting your children and involving them in family life.
The healthy involvement of young family members is good for them – learning how to work, picking up skills and developing a necessary appreciation of risk assessment themselves.
Children cannot grow up in glass cages. For town and city kids, that means coping with an environment where crossing the road in heavy traffic is risky and where handling peer pressure must be a learned skill much earlier in life. Country kids live in an environment that is more sheltered in many ways.
There is no point in locking children permanently away from the farm. Children have a natural curiosity and will want to explore. It’s natural. They should do so initially in the company of a supervising adult and be trained over time to assess and evaluate risk themselves.
A child untrained and restricted away from a farm is most vulnerable when they defy orders and turn up in a field where work is being carried out or in a busy yard.
Supervision
Children should be introduced to the yard always with an adult who does not have a working role in whatever is being done at the time.
Minding children is a full-time job, particularly in a work environment. It was easier a generation ago, before the single operator farm became the norm. I spent my childhood in the fields or the farmyard, holding onto the hand of someone bigger.
Two simple rules prevail on our farm. A child is either under supervision on the ground or is on the machine. There is no acceptable third scenario. Retrofitting a passenger seat is a good investment for anyone with a tractor that doesn’t have one. It costs, I know, but we are all used to buying car seats for children now.
Driving
Children under 14 are prohibited by law from operating tractors and other machinery around the farm. For children 14 and up, driving around the farm should only be done with an adult in the passenger seat, a reversal of previous years where the child can have studied and learned good driving technique.
A tractor licence (category W) can be obtained on reaching your 16th birthday. This should not mean putting a newly licensed driver on the road with a 200hp tractor and a 16ft silage or grain trailer.
Common sense must prevail. A child should gradually develop from manageable machinery. Again, it’s a relatively new problem. Anyone my age probably started out on a Massey Ferguson 135 or a Ford 3000, with smaller loads, on quieter roads.
Children love farm animals as much as they love loud machines. Again, the advice is not to deny all access, but provide supervised and safe access. Make sure children understand which animals and which situations are dangerous.
I have to say I found the HSA’s guidelines very helpful. I hope to put them into practice.
It’s not a question of investing money, it’s more about setting aside time to introduce children to the working environment of the farm.
Unfortunately, time is as valuable and scarce a commodity on many farms as money, but time spent with your children is surely never wasted, is it?
The death of a child is always tragic. If the cause of death is an avoidable accident, it is doubly so. Too many children are dying on Irish farms. In addition, children are being injured, maimed, and bruised.
There is risk attached every time we climb out of bed in the morning, and we cannot ever hope to eliminate all farm accidents. However, we all need to adopt some basic first principles to minimise and manage risk.
In 2010, the Health and Safety Authority (HSA) introduced a code of practice in relation to preventing accidents to children in agriculture. It sets out a wide range of effective and mostly simple measures to manage risk where children are on farms. Every farm family should have a copy.
Every aspect of farm safety for children is covered. Approaching the issue all at once can be overwhelming, but the HSA has broken it down into a number of sections, which makes tackling safety more manageable. These include:
Supervision, instruction and training.General principles of health and safety management. Play areas for children not involved in work activities. Operating and riding on machinery. Contact with machinery and moving vehicles. Contact with animals. Drowning and asphyxiation. Hazardous substances. Falling from heights. Being hit by a falling object. Fire.As a father of three boys living on a farm, I am fully aware of how difficult it is to strike a balance between protecting your children and involving them in family life.
The healthy involvement of young family members is good for them – learning how to work, picking up skills and developing a necessary appreciation of risk assessment themselves.
Children cannot grow up in glass cages. For town and city kids, that means coping with an environment where crossing the road in heavy traffic is risky and where handling peer pressure must be a learned skill much earlier in life. Country kids live in an environment that is more sheltered in many ways.
There is no point in locking children permanently away from the farm. Children have a natural curiosity and will want to explore. It’s natural. They should do so initially in the company of a supervising adult and be trained over time to assess and evaluate risk themselves.
A child untrained and restricted away from a farm is most vulnerable when they defy orders and turn up in a field where work is being carried out or in a busy yard.
Supervision
Children should be introduced to the yard always with an adult who does not have a working role in whatever is being done at the time.
Minding children is a full-time job, particularly in a work environment. It was easier a generation ago, before the single operator farm became the norm. I spent my childhood in the fields or the farmyard, holding onto the hand of someone bigger.
Two simple rules prevail on our farm. A child is either under supervision on the ground or is on the machine. There is no acceptable third scenario. Retrofitting a passenger seat is a good investment for anyone with a tractor that doesn’t have one. It costs, I know, but we are all used to buying car seats for children now.
Driving
Children under 14 are prohibited by law from operating tractors and other machinery around the farm. For children 14 and up, driving around the farm should only be done with an adult in the passenger seat, a reversal of previous years where the child can have studied and learned good driving technique.
A tractor licence (category W) can be obtained on reaching your 16th birthday. This should not mean putting a newly licensed driver on the road with a 200hp tractor and a 16ft silage or grain trailer.
Common sense must prevail. A child should gradually develop from manageable machinery. Again, it’s a relatively new problem. Anyone my age probably started out on a Massey Ferguson 135 or a Ford 3000, with smaller loads, on quieter roads.
Children love farm animals as much as they love loud machines. Again, the advice is not to deny all access, but provide supervised and safe access. Make sure children understand which animals and which situations are dangerous.
I have to say I found the HSA’s guidelines very helpful. I hope to put them into practice.
It’s not a question of investing money, it’s more about setting aside time to introduce children to the working environment of the farm.
Unfortunately, time is as valuable and scarce a commodity on many farms as money, but time spent with your children is surely never wasted, is it?
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