Child safety and deprivation

1

• Child safety and deprivation
• Mike Hayes
• Child Accident Prevention Trust

2
Child safety and deprivation

• Numbers, trends and patterns
• Effective prevention
• Learning from the Neighbourhood Road Safety
  Initiative
• Low literacy and prevention
• Mapping activity in Bradford

3
Deaths and injuries in the UK - birth to 14
years

• 251 deaths in 2005
• England and Wales 213 (25.6 per million)
• Scotland 20 (35.3 per million)
• Northern Ireland 18 (30.9 per million)
• About 100,000 admissions to hospital
• Over 2 million AE attendances

4
By comparison

• 251 deaths from accidents compares with
• 60 deaths from family abuse and neglect
• 20 killings by strangers
• 115 deaths from meningitis

5
Accidental deaths, England and Wales birth 14
years, 1979 - 2005
6
Downward trend

• Increased child restraint and seat belt use and
  improved vehicle design
• Increased smoke alarm ownership
• Safer (and new) consumer products
• Improvements in medical care
• Changes in child behaviour, reducing exposure to
  hazards

7
Injury mortality rates by social class
Source I Roberts and C Power (1996), BMJ Vol 31.3
8
Injury inequalities

• The poorest children are also more likely to be
• admitted to hospital
• admitted with more severe injuries

9
Injury inequalities

• Why?

• The environment where children travel and play
• The houses they live in
• The stress their families live under

10
Effective interventions

• Apparent lack of effect does not mean that
  something is not working
• Changing knowledge and attitudes and hence
  behaviour can take time
• Differences between countries may mean that
  interventions do not travel or will need
  translating

11
Key messages

• Education, environmental change and legislation
  all have a part to play and their effect in
  combination is important
• Community-based campaigns need
• the sustained use of injury surveillance systems
• commitment to inter-agency cooperation
• time to develop networks and implement a range of
  interventions

12
Pedestrian and cycle initiatives

• 20 mph zones
• Cycle helmet educational campaigns
• Cycle helmet legislation
• Education aimed at parents for pedestrian
  injuries
• Area-wide urban safety measures
• Cycle training

13
Car passengers

• Child restraint and seat belt educational
  campaigns
• Child restraint loan schemes
• Child restraint legislation

14
In the home

• Smoke detectors programmes
• Child-resistant packaging
• Product design
• General safety devices
• Window bars
• Parent education on hazard reduction

15
The NRSI local authorities

• Blackburn with Darwen
• Blackpool
• Bolton
• Bradford
• Bury
• Liverpool
• Manchester
• Nottingham

• Oldham
• Rochdale
• Salford
• Sandwell
• Stoke-on-Trent
• Tameside
• Wigan

16
Targeting people and places

• People AND places, not people OR places
• Consider road safety issues that people face, not
  simply the problems that the places where they
  live can create
• Identifying the groups at risk can help to
  identify organisations that can assist
• Need to get behind the statistics remember that
  what people want to do, but cant, matters in
  taking road safety decisions

17
Innovative approaches

• Not just about creating new interventions - it
  can also involve new ways of defining target
  audiences, creating new working methods, adapting
  staffing requirements, creating and sustaining
  new partnerships, etc
• Innovation can take time
• Can be about doing things differently, not
  stopping doing things
• Making the case for being innovative is not easy

18
Involving the community

• Asking people about their concerns and listening
  to their answers
• Seeking reactions to proposed interventions
• Involving the community in programme development
  and delivery
• Can bring communities together, improve image of
  council
• Can be time-consuming and expensive, but can be
  the key to successful projects

19
Partnerships

• Partners can open many doors, for example
• access to target groups, especially hard to reach
  groups, often through pre-existing relationships.
  
• additional resources - people, skills and
  knowledge, money and other resources
• new approaches and other ways of thinking about
  issues
• access to additional policy frameworks

20
Partnerships

• Development and maintenance of partnerships
  requires effort. Dedicated posts in NRSI
  councils.
• Other benefits
• Partnerships can lead to costs being shared
• Can help the sustainability of programmes as a
  result of new agencies becoming involved in road
  safety
• Broadening the reach by embedding road safety
  into the plans of other agencies

21
Other issues

• Communication and collaboration
• Road safety programmes can improve links between
  local authority departments, as well as between
  local authorities and other agencies
• Sustainability of programmes
• Partnerships can lead to costs being shared
• Embed road safety into the plans of other agencies

22
Addressing low literacy
23
Literacy in England and Wales

• One in six adults has the reading age of a child
  aged under 12 years 5 million adults
• Of adults with poor literacy
• two-thirds have a reading age of 9-11 year olds
  (3.5 million adults)
• 1 in 30 cannot read English at all (180,000
  adults)

24
Poor literacy, deprivation and ethnicity

• Among adults with poor literacy
• 33 are in low-paid jobs
• 44 are unemployed
• 36 of tenants of publicly-owned housing have
  poor literacy
• Adults from black and minority ethnic communities
  are between 2.5 and 3.5 times more likely to have
  poor literacy than the population as a whole

25
(No Transcript)
26
Mapping activity in Bradford

• Commissioned by Bradford LSCB
• Part of a process to developing a local child
  accident prevention strategy
• Interviews with a sample of people undertaking
  child accident prevention work
• Report by the end of January

27
Very early findings from mapping

• Enthusiasm among practitioners
• Lots of good work being undertaken
• Welcome for Davinas Hartleys post
• Good time to be moving forward following the
  restructuring of the PCTs
• Scope for better coordination of activities and
  sharing of who is doing what

28
Child Accident Prevention Trust email
safe_at_capt.org.uk web www.capt.org.uk