SOS Alarm and AddSecure run pilot project to increase school safety
The joint solution increases the safety of students and employees and give parents peace of mind
AddSecure, a leading provider of secure critical communications and data, and SOS Alarm, the organization that operates the emergency number 112 in Sweden, has entered into a partnership regarding School Safety. The two partners has launched a pilot project on school safety together with the school Dalhemsskolan in Helsingborg, Sweden. The purpose is to give staff the ability to handle difficult situations and thereby increase the safety of students, employees and give peace of mind to guardians.
“Threats and physical violence are common in today's school environment. Staff can often feel alone and exposed in troublesome situations. This solution increases the school's own ability to handle situations until outside help arrives. Some behaviour that occur in schools would never be accepted in a workplace”, says David Ångell, business developer at SOS Alarm.
The new solution consists of a communication platform and several different technical aids such as an app, personal portable alarms and pagers. When something happens, the staff can alert each other and SOS Alarm by a simple push of a button on their smartphone or through the personal alarm. The school's action group then quickly comes to the rescue and can solve the task or call for further reinforcement through SOS Alarm and collaborative partners such as rescue services, police and the municipality’s security guards.
The app contains 14 scenarios for different types of incidents such as an accident in the school yard, convening a crisis group, informing about a gas leak, or major serious incidents such as assault and deadly violence.
"We want students and staff at our school to have a safe work environment," says Anette Swenninger, principal at Dalhemsskolan. “Being a teacher often means working alone in the classrooms with individual responsibility for many students. By being able to alert a colleague in a challenging situation, we increase the security of staff and students. By having the school staff consistently acting on every incident, we show that certain behaviors are not accepted.”
The project aims to increase the staff's ability to handle specific incidents, partly through education and partly through the school safety solution. The school will be able to follow up incidents over time in order to make decisions about targeted actions. It will also be possible to see how effective the measures have been, which will be part of the school's quality work.
“Not feeling safe creates pressure on an already exposed professional group and on students, says Claes Åhlström, business developer at AddSecure. If we can reverse this and create a better work and study environment, we will hopefully see a positive effect in the organization with lower staff turnover, less damage and also better school results for students.”
The pilot runs throughout the spring term and will be completed in conjunction with the term ending in June 2020.
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