Funded by the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine under the EIP Initiative, Farm Family CPD was launched by Minister of State with responsibility for farm safety, Martin Heydon, on the Daniels’ farm in Kilmoganny, Co. Kilkenny, on the 31st May 2022.
Farm Family CPD aims to deliver innovative online health & safety training to farm families.
Peter Slattery, General Manager, FRS Training and Project Manager for Farm Family CPD sets out the main objective of the project: “To provide online farm safety training for all farm family members which affects attitudes and behaviours. This is necessary to make Irish farms safer living and workplaces.”
Together with a farm safety communications programme, the online training will be available to farm families throughout Ireland. The project works in partnership with farm families to promote a new cost effective and sustainable training-led approach to foster farm health, safety and wellbeing within each generation of the farm family unit.
Launching the project, Minister of State Heydon, Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine said: “We must use every tool at our disposal to generate behavioural change on farms and make them safer places. The use of e-learning will allow this project to reach hundreds of farm families with health and safety training. It also recognises the multi-generational nature of Irish farms and will include all farm family members from the very young to the older generations in the learning process. We have a strong family farm structure in this country, and we must maximise the different channels of influence to really affect attitudes towards farm safety.”
The approach emphasizes the need for farm families to work together to achieve a safer environment and help each other to adopt a safety-first culture. The programme and its evaluation aims to both develop the requirement for change and further develop farm safety culture within farm households by encouraging all family members and influencers to participate.
Bryan Daniels who hosted the launch on the family farm in Kilkenny and is a member of the project Operational Group with his wife Gail added: “I have enjoyed good success in my farming career to date and I put this down to continuous training through both my discussion group and other courses. The online training will be an ideal way to help maintain safety for every member of my family who live and work on our farm.”
The programme is farmer friendly, family friendly and can further develop the capacity for behavioural change on farms. Learning outcomes, assessments and evaluations can be used to further develop and contribute to a cost-effective national training model for farm health and safety.
The training will be available from October 2022 and is free of charge as a result of the EIP funding. Interested farm families can register their interest on www.farmfamilycpd.ie The project is supported by FRS Training, HSA, Teagasc, FBD, IFA and FRS Network.