Junior and Safer Citizen schemes

Junior Citizen Scheme
'A partnership initiative aimed at giving young children the skills to deal with a wide range of emergency situations, and to enable them to make a valued contribution to their local community through good citizenship'.

The approach of the programme is to provide the children with realistic life experiences through scenarios that cover a wide range of issues, encouraging them to think through problems they are confronted with and resolve them successfully.
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Safer Citizen Scheme
In 2006, the very successful Junior Citizen Scheme, a partnership between the Council, the Metropolitan Police and the Fire Service was extended to provide a Safer Citizen Scheme for young people with special needs. This new development took the original Junior Citizen project, which provides training for all 10-year-old children (Year 5) in the Borough participating in 12 emergency scenarios, and adapted it for young people from 11 to 18 years of age with hearing, visual or mobility impairments, presenting them with four scenarios: Stranger Danger, Fire Safety, Home Safety and Home Security.

The scheme continued in 2007 and 2008 hosted by the Randall Close Day Centre (Leonard Cheshire Foundation), which proved to be an absolute advantage, since its inherent facilities for dealing with people with disabilities enhanced the efficient running of the scenarios. The event was seen as a huge success by all those staff, presenters, visitors and most importantly the pupils themselves who were involved. New partnerships have been forged, which can only be of great benefit in the future to all disabled people in the Borough irrespective of age. All presenters experienced a very steep learning curve in how to deliver messages to young people with such a wide range of disabilities. They faced the challenge with great enthusiasm and commitment.

"The staff and service users felt the event was a huge success on our part and your part. The event proved that with a little encouragement it was possible for the community to work closely together in supporting young adults with learning difficulties and to work alongside one another without any barriers, restrictions or prejudice. The event was organised in a professional manner with times of scenarios to suit the needs of the visitors. The scenarios were perfectly suited to the youngsters and our users were happy to meet and greet them and be part of the event." - Randall Close Day Centre Manager.

An award for the Safer Citizen Scheme 
This November the Safer Citizen Scheme won an award at the National Personal Safety Awards 2008. The awards, organised by the Suzy Lamplugh Trust, exist to reward those that have acheived the most in furthering personal safety. The Wandsworth Safer Citizen Scheme won the award in the Safer Community catergory (sponsored by BrightHouse) for the local authority which has done the most to improve the personal safety of its residents or staff.