Safety on the farm: Children are crucial for changing the attitudes of families

Shortly afterwards, McLeod suffered two more concussions and a rib injury while riding horses on the farm.

Growing up, rural safety wasn’t something that was discussed at home.

She said her accidents were not taken seriously at the time and her symptoms continued to worsen.

“When you can’t get out the things that are in your head, it just feels like a combination of marshmallow and spaghetti,” she said.

And it has taken a toll on her mental health.

“It probably took me a good twelve months before I really laughed.

“I still remember that vividly.

“My father was in tears because he said, ‘I actually haven’t heard you laugh in 12 months’.”

Now she suffers from ongoing effects of brain trauma.

“It has had a big impact on my life. After my accident, I was never able to farm full-time again,” she says.

‘I can’t get another head injury. So I’m not allowed to cycle, snow ski or do any of those things where I could potentially have an accident.”

She said all her accidents were preventable.

And McLeod wasn’t the only New Zealander.

According to WorkSafe data, 61 farmers have been killed and more than 45,000 have been injured while working on farms in the past five years.

And the statistics did not deteriorate.

To help combat these fatalities, Safer farms was founded to agricultural sector to make farms safer places to work and reduce fatalities.

Chairman Lindy Nelson said they had a strategy called “Farm without damage” to help prevent physical and mental harm to the farming community.

“This looks at the four main areas of damage that cause serious injuries.

“So we call that psychosocial damage, damage to vehicles, our poisoning and damage that happens around animals.”

Nelson said it has made a huge difference to the community, but more needs to be done.

“I think children can have a huge impact on social change.”

In fact, a farmer, author and advocate for farm safety Harriet Bremner is a step forward.

Based on her own personal experience with loss, Bremner has written two children’s books on farm safety, along with leading the ‘think brain safe’ campaign.

This involved visit rural schools where local farmers, police and officers teach safety modules to children.

Examples include learning weight distribution on trailers, knowing the difference between agricultural chemicals, how to handle livestock and a basic first aid course.

“I had an adult come up to me and he said his kid came home and approached him to wear his helmet from a different angle,” Bremner said.

“He said, ‘Dad, you know, even if you just do a small job, which some people usually do, you often have these accidents and if you fall off the bike and hit your head, you can die and that’s what we do. not.’ I don’t have a father anymore’.”

Bremner believed that introducing change through tamariki (children) was the key.

“If you think back to McDonald’s ‘Make It Click’ campaign 30 years ago, not everyone was wearing their seat belt on the road, and now they are,” she said.

“So it was a real generational change in behavior and it’s pretty much the same thing I’m trying to do with the safety campaign.

“The kids are great at bringing up these quite, sometimes brutal conversations with their parents, and that’s what we hope to get out of the days as well.”

The only downside was the constant need for sponsorship from local businesses, which Bremner said could be a challenge.

Here the idea of ​​introducing farm safety into the school curriculum was welcomed.

In a written statement, the Ministry of Education said: “Schools design health and physical education (HPE) curricula that meet the needs of their students and the context of where they live, work or experience recreation.”

But for now nothing was mandatory.

And it remained clear that something had to change in New Zealand’s agricultural attitudes.

McLeod said if safety equipment had been normalized in schools, things would have been different.

“If I had worn a helmet, I wouldn’t have had the onset of multiple concussion syndrome.”

She, like many others, believed that the way to normalize farm safety was to start educating up the family tree rather than down.

– RNZ