To coincide with National Grandparents Day on Sunday 30 October, the Victorian Farmers Federation’s Making Our Farms Safer project (VFF MOFS) has released a new video highlighting the vital role grandparents play in making our farmers safer.
VFF Vice-President and Chair of the VFF Child Safety on Farms Steering Committee Danyel Cucinotta said the video forms part of the Making Our Farm Families Safer campaign which aims to influence cultural change surrounding safety on farms.
“Multigenerational farming is still quite common, so grandparents are living on the same farm as their grandchildren. More often than not, with childcare and afterschool care shortages, our farming grandparents play a crucial role in supporting and caring for their grandchildren.”
“It’s vitally important for parents and grandparents to really assess the tasks on farms they are giving their children when they are helping out or working on the farm,” Ms Cucinotta said.
The video features a number of grandparents living on Victorian farms and demonstrates the progress being made to ensure safer farms.
“We’ve made huge steps forward when it comes to on-farm safety compared to years ago. We must continue to strive for farming incidents causing injury or death to be a thing of the past and we hope videos such as this really strike a chord with the farming community,” Ms Cucinotta said.
The Making Our Farm Families Safer campaign launched during farm safety week in July 2022 with a guidebook and series of case studies and videos featuring real Victorian farming families sharing their stories of how they manage safety of their children performing work related tasks aged 10-14 on their farms.
You can watch the grandparents on farms video on the VFF Making Our Farms Safer website at http://www.makingourfarmssafer.org.au