Risk-benefit assessment template

Foraging and tasting

Wild garlic, blackberries, elderflower. One rule sits above all the others and is never, ever bent.

Nothing goes in a mouth until a leader has checked it. Say it every session. Say it to the adults too.

The honest control here is leader competence, and no ratio substitutes for it. If you cannot identify what you are picking, to species, with total certainty, then the control is not more supervision. The control is not picking it.

Benefits of the experience

This column is why the activity happens. Write yours before you write a single hazard.

Identification skills learned with an immediate, edible reward, which is exactly why they stick.
Restraint and ethics. Taking only what you need lands far better in a wood than in a classroom.
A direct, sensory connection to where food comes from, which for many children is genuinely new.

Hazards, controls and residual risk

Severity (S) and Likelihood (L) are each scored 1–3 and multiplied into a Risk Rating (RR). Low is 1–3, Medium 4–6, Significant 7–9. The final column is what is left after your controls, which is the number that matters.

Experience / activity	Hazards	Associated risks	S	L	RR	Control actions	Risk after controls
Identifying and picking	Misidentification Poisonous look-alikes Fungi	Poisoning, in the worst cases fatal	3	1	3	Nothing goes in a mouth until a leader has checked it. No exceptions, adults included. Only forage species you can identify with total certainty. Wild garlic: leaf shape, one leaf per stem, AND the smell. Every child crushes and sniffs. No fungi. Not with children. There is no version of this that is worth it.	Low (1)
Eating what is picked	Contamination Allergens	Gastric illness Parasites Allergic reaction to a novel food	3	1	3	Nothing picked below knee height, where dogs go. Nothing from verges, sprayed margins or beside the path. Washed with clean water carried in. Parental consent for tasting obtained in advance, in writing, naming the species. Allergy list checked against TODAY's register before anything is tasted. A child may always opt out, and it must never be a thing.	Low (1)
Taking from the site	Over-harvesting Protected species	Damage to the ecosystem and to next year's session	1	2	2	One leaf per plant, and only where it carpets. Landowner's permission. Never a protected species. Take a little, leave a lot. Taught as an ethic, not as a rule.	Low (1)

The scoring key

Severity (S)

3 Death or major injury
2 Permanent disability or serious injury
1 Minor injury

Likelihood (L)

3 Occurs repeatedly
2 Will or could occur
1 Unlikely, though conceivable

Risk Rating (RR = S × L)

7–9 Significant
4–6 Medium
1–3 Low

What this template cannot know

Risk assessments are site-specific. This one is a starting point, not an answer, and copying it unchanged would be a mistake. Before you sign anything, work out the following for your wood and your group:

What actually grows on your site, and whether YOU can identify it to species with certainty.
What the land is used for, and what has been sprayed on or near it.
Your landowner's permission to take anything at all.
Today's allergy list, against today's register.

Then put your name on it, date it, and set a review date. The assessment belongs to the person who signs it, which is you.

The paperwork around it

The taught form carries a header before the table, and it earns its place: the activity, the group, who carried the assessment out, the date it was written, the review frequency (annually is typical), the date it was last reviewed, a signature, and any other assessments it refers to. Your site assessment sits under all of your activity assessments, so name it here.

None of that is bureaucracy for its own sake. An assessment nobody signed and nobody reviewed is not an assessment, it is a document. And the review is where the near-misses you logged during the term finally do their job: they are the reason next year's version is better than this one.

Write it once. Stack it on every session.

Keep your assessments as a reusable library, stack the right ones onto each session (a frozen copy travels with the day), and log the dynamic call you make on the ground, offline, with cold hands. Free for practitioners, never per child.

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