I.M.P.S. celebrates 15 years teaching children how to help save lives
13 October, 2016
On Tuesday 11th October I.M.P.S. (Injury Minimisation Programme for Schools), run by City Health Care Partnership CIC (CHCP CIC) celebrated 15 years of helping year 6 pupils to help save lives. The Injury Minimisation Programme for Schools is an innovative health education programme for 10 and 11 year olds that teaches them how to manage risk and provides them with first aid skills to minimise injury. On average two million children attend A&E departments each year because of accidental injury; every week five children die.
I.M.P.S. was launched in Hull in 2001 and the majority of Hull primary schools are now enrolled in the programme, seeing approximately 1,800 children each year. I.M.P.S. supports the government’s aim to ‘help children achieve more’ by teaching young people how to stay safe and keep healthy.
Its aim is to teach children how to recognise potentially dangerous situations and prevent injuries and equips them with first aid and resuscitation skills, helping them respond effectively if an incident occurs. Donna Shipp, I.M.P.S. Coordinator for CHCP CIC says, “Teaching children how to recognise potentially dangerous situations to prevent injuries is very important. The programme gives the children essential skills that they can use for the rest of their lives”.
The programme includes an exciting guided tour to the A&E department, which allows children to experience many of the concepts learnt in the classroom when applied to the real world. Students are taught how to prevent and deal with the most common accidents that children of their age are likely to have like burns and scalds, falls, electrocution, choking, bleeding and road traffic accidents. They also learn how to perform basic life support and how to put individuals into the recovery position.
Earlier this year Will Dennison from Hull spoke of the importance of learning life-saving skills after using them to help a friend who fell off his scooter: “I think it’s important because if you didn’t learn them and someone else got themselves into a situation like I did and didn’t know what to do, then they’d just say ‘get up, you’re all right’”.
