Constable Care
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Constable Care is a community awareness mascot, employed by the Western Australia Police to inform primary school children about basic safety issues. He is now owned by a non-profit organisation, the Constable Care Child Safety Foundation.
Constable Care first appeared in the The West Australian newspaper in the mid-1980s. Originally moustachioed, his smiling visage was accompanied by a two line rhyming couplet encouraging children in particular to be safety-conscious and civic-minded. He has become a bit of an institution in Western Australia, having imparted several thousand daily aphorisms over the course of two decades - with many of the The West's readership excusing his inevitable inanity.
Constable Care often appears at school events - often riding in on a helicopter for 'wow' effect
[edit] Reference
Constable Care was created by Wayne Hodges in 1984 in Sydney NSW, Australia.
He was then a member of the NSW Police Force Safety Advisory Section. The character was created to "sell" the concept of safety to school children. The NSW Police Safety Advisory Section (later changed to Unit) were a group of dedicated NSW Police Officers who visited school throughout Sydney,NSW to teach children about important safety topics.
Wayne Hodges approached Don Knight, then publisher of the NSW Police News, the official News Magazine of the NSW Police Association. Don Knight provided the expertise to have the Constable Care character to be in a comic format, and later in co-operation with the NSW Dept of Education encouraged Sydney School Children to follow Constable Care's lead and "Think Safety".
Constable appeared in Safety Calendars, comics, T shirts, baseball caps and more for the next few years.
In the late 1980's Constable Care was launched in Western Australia were it's creator Wayne Hodges flew to perth to be there with WA Government Representatives, School Children and WA Police representatives.
The idea of Constable Care was to encourage a positive Safety attitude for school children and for the period that the intercated with NSW School Children his positive image was well know throughout the state of NSW.
