Beep Beep! Day 2013 evaluation report

Prepared December 2013

About Beep Beep! DaysBeep Beep! Days are fun, interactive days for under-eights that help children start learning the road safety

basics through fun activities, while raising awareness among parents and the wider community about

protecting children on roads. The initiative, co-ordinated by Brake, and sponsored in 2013 by Churchill Car

Insurance, involved nurseries, children’s centres, playgroups, child minders and primary schools across the

UK running a range of road safety activities with resources, advice and information provided by Brake

Beep Beep! Days can be run on any day of the year and children can be sponsored to take part or

educators can provide a donation alongside their event, helping fund Brake's campaigns and services for

families bereaved and injured by road crashes. Brake also carries out a media campaign linked to the

project to promote the importance of children’s safety, and communicate life-saving messages to parents

and the wider public.

ParticipationAs of December 2013, 27,031 children from 458 nurseries, children’s centres, schools, child minders and

playgroups were confirmed as having taking part in a Beep Beep! Day in 2013. This compares with a final

total of 14,442 children from 345 institutions confirmed as having taken part in 2012.

Of the 458 participants: 143 were nurseries, 97 children’s centres, 119 infant/primary schools, 42 were

playgroups or toddler groups, 38 were child minders, and the remainder were delivered by emergency

services or local authorities.

Registrations throughout the year stood at 1,225 compared with 995 in 2012, and the percentage of those

registered that actually took part increased from 35% to 37%, likely to rise further still as more confirm

participation. The average number of children taking part at each institution increased from 42 to 59.

42% of participating groups had taken part in the event in previous years. This compares with 36% in 2012,

and 38% in 2011, so the Beep Beep! Day project has maintained a core of educators that run the project

each year and also reached a significant new audience. Of those who took part, 90% indicated they would

like to do so again in 2014.

Some examples of feedback from educators that took part this year:

ACE Nursery School, Cambridge: ‘The children thoroughly enjoyed the event and it has really helped

them think about road safety.’

Shelley Primary School, Essex: ‘It was great and we’re planning on doing another one in the new year

and inviting along the local PCSO this time. The traffic light biscuits were a big success so we will be

making them again and selling them to parents to raise money for Brake.’

St Cuthbert’s RC Primary School, Cardiff: ‘Thank you for all your support and resources. The children

and parents all loved the day, and we have added a link to Brake’s website on our school page to

encourage people to visit it. It was an extremely successful event and we will definitely do it again.’

Junior Road Safety Officers at Millbank Primary School in Cardiff organised and held a Beep Beep! Day for pupils during Road Safety Week,

focussing on how to be safe when crossing or near roads. The JRSOs used

resources from their Beep Beep! Day pack and the Brake website to plan a

successful day that was enjoyed by all. They are planning another Beep

Beep! Day in 2014 with additional road safety activities including a survey of

parents and an interview with a local road safety professional.

Marketing Beep Beep! Day Brake secured significant support from local authorities in promoting the event, with 142 local education or

road safety teams agreeing to promote Beep Beep! Days via a combination of targeted emails, articles or

information in newsletters and information on websites at regular intervals throughout the year.

Though many educators did not provide specific details of where they heard about Beep Beep! Day, 71 of

those who registered cited receiving information from their local authority. Improvements made to the online

booking form for the project should make the mapping of where educators heard about the project easier.

Brake continued to enlist the help of partner organisations, networks and publications to widen the reach of

the event, through websites, in newsletters, via targeted mailings and through features and articles in

publications. We secured marketing activity with 48 organisations, including road safety bodies and

voluntary, community and education sector networks, websites and publications, whose communications

reached approximately 420,000 people. We received continuing support from many organisations that

marketed the event in 2012 and more besides, including: Road Safety GB, Road Safety Scotland, Road

Safety Wales, the National Children’s Bureau, Nursery World, the National Day Nurseries Association,

Primary Times, Net Mums, Teach It magazine, the Child Brain Injury Trust, Nasen, Parent Talk, FOC

Advertising, Regional Voices, Support magazine, Skool Link magazine and Action with Communities in

Rural England. In addition, we worked with large nursery chains across the UK, including Busy Bees,

Jigsaw Day Nurseries and Asquith, providing marketing content for newsletters, websites and mailings for

them to encourage participation at their nurseries.

Brake also continued to encourage registrations through marketing emails to more than 5,000 early years

educators on our database, and through regular promotion of the event via our educator bulletins sent to

7,700 educators, and Brake’s bulletins for supporters and road safety professionals, sent to more than

4,000 and 1,400 subscribers respectively. Brake’s team of community engagement officers also contacted

all participants in Beep Beep! Days from the previous two years to encourage them to register again.

Brake issued three national marketing press releases throughout the year, highlighting the number of

schools and children taking part in Beep Beep! Days, and calling on more educators to follow their lead.

These resulted in articles in leading educational publications and websites, including Primary Times, Head

Teacher Update, Nursery World magazine, Teach It, Parenting UK, theSchoolRun.com and Practical Pre-

School magazine.

Social media marketing has increased in 2013, with regular, planned posts on Facebook and twitter,

promoting the event to an audience of more than 2,750 followers on Facebook and 5,400 on twitter.

Facebook posts with images from Beep Beep! Days throughout the year proved popular with Brake’s

followers, in particular volunteers, parents, educators and community campaigners. Twitter provided a

useful platform for marketing the project, with road safety organisations, educator press and Brake

supporters retweeting and responding to promotional and marketing tweets with links to the website. Many

of the organisations that helped to promote the event through newsletters, websites and member mailings

were also active in tweeting about Beep Beep! Days.

Resources for participantsEach educator that registered to run a Beep Beep! Day was provided with a free resource pack containing

(see sample resource images, right): a large hand-print poster; posters promoting key

safety messages to families such as ‘hold hands’, ‘step safe’ and

‘belt up’; a giant banner; certificates and stickers for each child;

sponsorship envelopes and paying-in slips for schools fundraising.

Structured phone calls and emails directed educators to Brake’s

dedicated Beep Beep! Day web pages, which provide a range of

example road safety activities and links to teaching resources.

We received positive feedback from educators about the pack, which was rated 8.2 out of ten overall.

Schools also found the resources, information and ideas on the website helpful, rating it 8 out of ten.

Comments about the resource pack and website included:

Into-play Children’s Nursery, Gloucester: ‘The posters were very helpful in promoting the event to

parents and we plan to keep them up. The children especially loved the handprint poster.’

Hope Primary School, Liverpool: ‘We felt the resources were well-prepared, eye-catching and

appropriate for the children. The ideas on the website really helped us to structure the day, and everyone

was very enthusiastic on the day and took away some important messages to share with their parents.’

Communication with those taking part Brake’s community engagement team provided regular over the phone and email support to educators

once they registered. This was provided via a series of planned, structured phone calls and follow-up

emails. These communications focused on: confirming details about the event, including how many children

were taking part; ensuring they had all the information they needed to run their event; going through the

contents of the resource packs and other resources available online; suggesting ways to promote road

safety to pupils, parents and the wider community; establishing if they were able to fundraise or donate to

Brake and offering fundraising ideas; offering to publicise the event via local press releases.

Road safety activities Brake received a great deal of positive feedback from educators about the activities they ran as part of their

Beep Beep! Days. Of the educators that held a Beep Beep! Day and provided information about their event,

we received the following feedback about their activities:

54% made a road safety display

35% ran an event that was attended by parents, to help spread the road safety message

19% set up a play crossing or road scene to help teach lessons about holding hands and the words

stop and go

18% were visited by a local road safety professional, including local road safety officers, PCSOs or

crossing patrols

14% made traffic light biscuits or other road safety themed treats

8% ran their event over more than one day

Examples of feedback from schools about their activities:

Sian Skelton, child minder, Telford: ‘We ran a whole range of activities over several days including a road safety play using play road signs, traffic lights and zebra crossing, a poster competition, road safety story time, a treasure hunt with road safety questions, using the handprint poster, and dressing in bright clothes to highlight the need to ‘be bright and be seen’.’

Newbold Children’s Centre, Rochdale: ‘We made posters and a collage in our stay and play session to emphasise the importance of holding hands, and the children also used the activity sheets from the Brake website. We also made traffic light biscuits which the children sold to raise money, and we talked to parents about how they can help to teach their children about road safety and keep them safe near roads.’

Children at Busy Bees Nursery at Royal Preston Hospital ran a Beep

Beep! Day and raised an amazing £201.50 for Brake. The children brought

bikes, tricycles and scooters to learn about road safety and the dangers of

traffic by marking out roads in their outside play area. Nursery nurse Claire

Turney said, ‘All the children and staff had so much fun while learning

important safety messages that they can’t wait to take part again next year!’

FundraisingBeep Beep! Days are an important fundraiser for Brake, through children collecting sponsorship or the

educators or parents providing a donation for taking part. When registering, and through regular

communications in the run-up, schools are encouraged to fundraise or donate in aid of Brake’s work.

£8,768 has so far been received from 129 educators that fundraised or provided a donation, of which 80

donated and 49 fundraised, though these figures are expected to rise considerably before the end of the

year as many Beep Beep! Days took place in late November and feedback and money is still due to be

received. At least 89 more payments are expected from educators that have confirmed they took part and

are providing funds or a donation. Based on the average funds raised or donated from schools so far, along

with the projected additional funds due from educators yet to feed back about their event, the total funds

from this year’s event are expected to be approximately £14,000.

The average donation provided by schools is approximately £39, slightly lower than the 2012 average of

£45, while the average amount raised by each fundraising school is again slightly lower than in 2012, at

£107 compared with £116.

Of the schools that didn’t fundraise or donate, 30% cited competing charitable causes, especially Children

in Need for those events happening during Road Safety Week, and the remainder gave a variety of other

feedback including: not being advised by colleagues/the event co-ordinator of plans to fundraise; not feeling

that the event was big enough to encourage sponsorship collection by children; not having time to co-

ordinate a fundraising push; being wary of asking parents and families to make contributions to a charitable

cause at the time of year, particularly for those taking place close to Christmas.

The Old Vicarage Nursery in Barrow-in-Furness ran their second Beep Beep!

Day in 2013, and again it was a great success. The children had a visit from their

local PCSO, Sam, who talked about the importance of sitting correctly and belting up

in vehicles. They set up a car mat with signs, vehicles and people, and had

discussions staying safe on pavements and when crossing roads. They also set the

outside play area out as a road, using a crossing, signs and vehicles, and the staff

and children demonstrated crossing the road safely. The nursery also managed to

raise over £100 for Brake.

Media campaign To promote road safety through the media linked to this event, Brake composed and

issued a national press release and coordinated a media event at Sharlston Children’s

Centre in Wakefield in August 2013 (pictured, right). This press release announced

results from a Brake survey of 1,000 parents of children under the age of ten on the

issue of seat belt safety. The survey found that:

One in 20 (5%) said they never use a child or booster seat;

More than a quarter (26%) have used a child seat or booster seat that did not fit properly;

Half (47%) don't always ensure their child uses an appropriate child seat or booster seat when

travelling in a taxi or someone else's car;

More than a quarter (27%) have used a second hand child seat or booster seat, which is not

recommended by safety experts.

As part of the media campaign Brake conducted interviews with 18 regional and local radio and TV

stations, including ITV Calendar who filmed activities on the day and interviewed Brake staff and

volunteers, children, parents and children’s centre staff. The release also generated coverage in 41 press

and website publications, including in several national newspapers such as The Times, The Sun, The Daily

Telegraph and The Mirror. Brake also issued local press releases for 28 educators that were running Beep

Beep! Days throughout 2013.

Twitter also helped to boost coverage of the Beep Beep! Day media campaign as 163 followers tweeted

and retweeted messages about the launch event or associated survey stats. Facebook posts featuring

images and descriptions of individual events throughout the year have also proved popular, having been

‘liked’ or shared by 226 Brake supporters.

Mortlach Primary School Nursery in Keith ran a fantastic Beep

Beep! Day. Children and adults all wore high-viz vests and the kids

learned all about being safe near roads and holding hands with parents.

They used the resource pack and Brake’s website to run interactive

lessons with the children and provide information to parents on key

road safety topics. They raised an amazing £781.71 for Brake.

Churchill partnershipThis year’s Beep Beep! Day project was once again sponsored by Churchill, whose sponsorship covered

the production and postage of resources for participating schools, staffing costs, and much of the promotion

of the event. This critical funding means funds raised by participating educators and children go towards

Brake’s wider work supporting families affected by road crashes and campaigning for road safety.

As part of this partnership, Brake also supported Direct Line Group (DLG) to introduce the project as an

option in its community volunteering programme. Brake offered opportunities for staff to use a designated

day of volunteering to help nurseries and schools in their area get involved. Resources were developed by

Brake to outline volunteering opportunities and provide a step-by-step guide to engaging educators.

Claims inspectors from a local Direct Line Group office helped to run a Beep

Beep! Day at Cottam Primary School in Preston, along with the Churchill dog. The

team helped to plan fun activities for the children, including designing reflective

clothing, having a talk from the local crossing patrol and PCSO, and learning about

holding hands near roads and crossing safely. Claims inspector Michelle Anderson

said, ‘The feedback from the school was really positive, and the children all enjoyed

the day (particularly seeing the Churchill dog). Mrs Timms, the Head Teacher, said that the school were

keen to run future events of this nature as they had such a good day.’

Developing Beep Beep! Day in 2014

As part of its annual review of this project, Brake is exploring ways to improve and expand the Beep Beep!

Day project in 2014, by developing resources, website information, communication with schools and

extending the reach of promotional and marketing activity. Initial plans for development are outlined below,

aimed at building on existing work to deliver the project.

Increased and earlier promotion to increase registrations:

Aim to increase the number of education and road safety teams within local authorities and police

and fire services that promote the event to local nurseries, groups and schools, by contacting them

at regular intervals throughout the year.

Call and send marketing emails to all schools that have taken part in previous years to sign up

again in 2014, reminding of the benefits of taking part and activities that they can run.

Encourage Brake’s volunteers and supporters to promote the event to local educators by providing

them with info and materials to disseminate, and explaining how they can support local events.

Continue to develop the range of national and regional partnership organisations promoting the

event, including approaching networks of community organisations (e.g. WI groups, rural community

groups) who can be encouraged to support, help supervise and fundraise alongside Beep Beep!

Days, as well as simply encourage local educators to sign up.

Improved support and resources for participants:

Refresh the content of resource packs and develop new resources where useful, including possibly

a hard-copy poster for schools to promote participation in the event to parents and the community.

Further develop case studies on participation on our website and communication with schools, to

provide increased inspiration and examples of awareness-raising and fundraising activities.

Encourage more educators, and in particular those that are fundraising or providing a donation to

Brake, to opt in to having a local press release issued to promote their event. This will include pro-

actively phoning educators that have let us know of plans for their day, to urge them to have a press

release issued.

Increase funds raised:

Provide a clearer list of fundraising options and advice, to encourage a greater proportion of

educators to raise, and help each educator raise more. This should include examples of fundraising

activities that other educators have come up with.

In phone calls and emails ahead of individual events, stress the importance of receiving funds and

feedback promptly after the event, especially with many days taking place late in the year, and

ensure that the most appropriate post-event contact at the school is recorded on the log for greater

ease in making contact quickly afterwards.

Review quantities and distribution of printed resources to ensure value for money.