Unit 1: Practical Health and Safety

Our fundamental way of thinking is that if you have good, healthy and safe container, you can be as free as you like within it – your job is to hold this ‘basket’ so that young people can explore within this.

Practical health and safety is essential in your role as a Forest School Practitioner. These are all living documents, that can be changed regularly as different experiences affect and change your knowledge. Our training will provide you with the essential skills and knowledge to enable you to think through the hazards and risks and how you can reduce these. You need to keep questioning
and reflecting on your practice and adapting where necessary.

We are not trying to make the Forest School experience risk free – we know the value of learning to take risks in life, to build the capacity to be discerning and to push through fears and experience new ideas and solutions. We want to find ways in our practice to encourage young people to risk assess situations on their own or with our help, if needed.

We have produced some key documents that set out areas to be covered when thinking about hazards, risk and the benefits of activities that may have hazards! As a professional practitioner you are legally required to have risk assessments for all your activities, and risk benefit assessments as part of good practice!