If an adult is injured while out with the kids and can't alert emergency services, what next? At the very least, you better have taught them how to use your mobile phone, writes CLAIRE O'CONNELL
IT’S NOT the kind of scenario you would wish on any family: a mother falls and lies semi-conscious on the side of a mountain and her seven-year-old child has to figure out what to do.
But luckily for Alison O’Reilly, her son Calbhach managed to keep things under control and call for help.
The pair went on a picnic in the Cooley Mountains last March and then decided to run up part of a slope, but the fun came to a halt when O’Reilly slipped on some stones.
“I must have really whacked my head, I don’t remember much of it,” she says. “I think I was lying on my back. I remember I could hear Calbhach beside me, sobbing.”
Despite the shock, though, Calbhach kept a cool head. He used O’Reilly’s phone to call his grandmother and the emergency services, and he helped his mother towards the car as she came around.
Once inside the car he stayed on the phone and he offered O’Reilly water and put the radio on to help keep her awake.
“He felt really strong when he was helping me, and I thought I was with a little man, he was so unphased,” she recalls. “He even asked the Garda to show him his badge before he would unlock the car door.”
The emergency services found the pair thanks, in part, to Calbhach remembering a monument he and his mother had looked at nearby, and when help arrived he travelled with her in the ambulance.
“I still felt dazed at the hospital and they kept me in,” says O’Reilly. “All the nurses were saying Calbhach had done a fantastic job and he deserved a medal.”
Last month Calbhach did receive an honour for his bravery and clear thinking – he was named “Little Champion of the Year” at the Maternity and Infant Awards.
In that case, everything turned out well, and O’Reilly was glad she had taught Calbhach the basics of using her mobile phone to get help.
That’s one of the key skills that parents can impart to their children, according to Fintan Breen, national commercialisation manager of the Irish Red Cross.
“Of course 999 is very easy for children to remember,” he says. “And then as the kids get a little bit older, especially if the family is doing European holidays, remember it might be 112. That number works right across the EU, including Ireland.”
Once on the phone to the emergency services, the child should know to say where they are and what happened, and then to stay on the phone, he adds.
“In an emergency people have a tendency to ring, blurt out a whole load of information and hang up. Then the operator is left wondering where you are. So we would stress to people that they should never hang up unless they are told to by the operator or the operator has hung up, that goes for adults as well.”
Keeping friends, neighbours and family on speed-dial settings the child can use might also be useful, says Breen, but he cautions that the selected contacts should live nearby.
And apart from getting help, children who are dealing with someone who is collapsed and unconscious should remember to ensure the person can breathe.
“The three things to think about are A, B and C: open their airway, make sure they are breathing and see do they have circulation,” says Breen. “So tilt their head and open the airway and make sure their mouth isn’t blocked, that it’s not against the ground.”
But if someone is out cold, moving them is not usually considered good practice, he notes. “In general, we’d say don’t move people if they are lying there unconscious, apart from opening their airways,” he says. “Because sometimes when you move people you might cause something else to happen that hadn’t already happened.”
Such talk of parents falling unconscious or being seriously injured could scare children, so Breen suggests a gentle, age-appropriate message.
“Parents know their children the best and they will know what level their child is at – between age five and 10 it can vary quite a lot in what they can understand and how they react to things,” he says.
One rule of thumb to explain to younger kids is that they may need to get help if a parent can’t answer them or wake up, he says. But the phone skills are probably the most pertinent to have: “Really the ambulance is the big thing, if they can make that call, it will be the biggest decider.”
The Irish Red Cross runs first aid courses for older children, teenagers and adults. For more details contact your local branch through www.RedCross.ie or phone 1890 502 502
