South Yorkshire Fire and Rescue, in partnership with South Yorkshire Police, are introducing the children of South Yorkshire to Miss Dorothy.  John Hoey, the Director of Community Safety and Med Hughes, the Chief Constable of South Yorkshire are the national lead for the Miss Dorothy project.

Miss Dorothy.Com is delivered for primary school children aged 7 - 11 by Dot Com, a nine year old cartoon character who teaches children key personal safety and crime prevention messages through fun adventure work books.

It also incorporates a gritty soap opera-style drama for children aged 11-16 called Watch Over Me.  This covers key safety issues including the journey to school, street robbery, domestic violence, gun crime, knives, drugs, forced marriage, alcohol abuse and all aspects of personal safety.  It has been filmed in conjunction with South Yorkshire Fire & Rescue.  As part of this the re-enactment of a road traffic collision was staged and filmed to form part of the WOM programme. 

The programme is focused on prevention, especially around personal safety, and ensuring that children don’t become victims or offenders.  This is achieved by tackling anti social behaviour at its root cause.  It shows children how to manage risk.  South Yorkshire are leading the way nationally to create innovative resources for the programme that will help children to develop confidence, enabling them to make informed choices, develop communication skills and strategies for dealing with risk, bullying and conflict.  It is crucial to bring the Fire Service into young people’s lives as early as possible and influence the next generation to think about the best ways to manage risk.

Within South Yorkshire, the resource was piloted in mainstream schools last year.  So far this year training sessions for teaching staff have resulted in over 120 schools receiving their free resources.  Further training sessions are confirmed for March and April.  This keeps the programme on track to achieve the target of introducing the materials into every junior and primary school within South Yorkshire this academic year.

Through partnership working, the Fire Service, Police, Miss Dorothy.Com and the Education Departments are helping the children of South Yorkshire to be able to “manage risk” in their everyday lives.  This is a fantastic initiative in which everyone involved is committed to ensuring that the resource becomes an established educational tool in every school in South Yorkshire.