In January, all classes will be taught the Stay Safe programme.

Personal safety skills are part of the Safety and Protection strand unit in the Social, Personal and Health Education (SPHE) curriculum for all primary school students. The Stay Safe programme is a mandatory personal safety skills programme for primary schools – both mainstream and special schools. The overall objective is to prevent child abuse, bullying and other forms of victimisation.

Here is a LINK for the Stay Safe Parent’s Guide. There is also a Parent’s section on the Stay Safe website HERE with advice and information relating to child protection.

Here is the LINK for the Stay Safe lessons and teacher resources for each class level. Your child’s teacher will send home ‘Home School Link’ worksheets so that you can discuss the topics and reinforce them with your child at home. 

Here is some information from the Stay Safe website:

The CAPP programme (Stay Safe) is a primary school based approach to the prevention of child abuse. The aim of the programme is to reduce vulnerability to child abuse and bullying through the provision of a personal safety education programme for children at primary school level, continuing professional development for teachers, training for Boards of Management and information sessions for parents.

The Stay Safe programme itself is a personal safety skills programme designed for use with primary school children from Junior Infants through to 6th class. The programme seeks to enhance children’s self-protective skills by participation in lessons on safe and unsafe situations, bullying, inappropriate touch, secrets, telling and stranger danger.

The programme aims to give children the skills necessary to enable them to recognise and resist abuse/victimisation and teaches them that they should always tell (an adult that can help) about any situation which they find unsafe, upsetting, threatening, dangerous or abusive.