Follow the links to find out more about each of projects that have been recently completed.
Child Safety Week is the Child Accident Prevention Trust’s flagship community education campaign, raising awareness of serious childhood accidents and how to prevent them. It generates substantial media coverage for practical safety advice and – by providing free resources to community-based organisations – acts as a catalyst for thousands of local safety activities and events, which reach millions of children and families UK-wide.
Child Safety Week 2005 ran from Monday 20 June to Sunday 26 June, with the theme “Not every accident is a lucky escape”.
Media coverage was strong, with over 60 million opportunities to see or hear about Child Safety Week and its practical prevention messages. Highlights included interviews on GMTV and Radio 1 Newsbeat.
Local Child Safety Week activities and events reached an estimated 3.4 million people UK-wide - 1.6 million parents and grandparents, and 1.8 million children and young people.
Distribution of the Child Safety Week ideas booklet - which is designed to act as a launch-pad for local activities - increased by 60% compared to 2004, with almost 29,000 copies dispatched by post and a further 20,000 copies downloaded from our website.
Independent market research found that Child Safety Week 2006 had the highest recall levels of awareness weeks held in June. Almost half of the parents polled said that they acted to make their children safer as a direct result of the Week. Here is just a small selection of the hundreds of comments we received:
“I didn’t know that a baby’s skin is 15 times thinner than an adult’s or how long a hot drink takes to cool – so I have learnt” Mother from Chorley, Lancashire
“I like to be safe and it learns people to wear seat belts in cars” Emma (aged 7)
“I’ve learnt all the rules to do before going out on my bike” Jessica (aged 11)
“It made me think about safety and how our actions can influence accidents” Simon (aged 14)
“It reminded me of all the hazards in the house we overlook. I was shocked to learn of the danger of iron tablets to toddlers. Thank you for helping to protect our young” Mother from south London
Community-based organisations working with children and parents also welcomed the support that Child Safety Week provides. Many told us that the Week helped them deliver safety messages in ways that were fun, engaging and interactive – with parents, carers and children more receptive to the messages as a result:
“It is a good opportunity to address the very important messages that can prevent a tragedy happening. It’s done in a fun and interesting way that gets people’s attention and gets them thinking of ways they do things and how they can improve. Many parents say: ‘Oh, I never thought of that!’. Also, from a community development point of view, it’s an opportunity for working together with different agencies and sharing ideas”
“It promotes awareness to parents/carers/children and professionals in a fun way where the children get involved in activities. Everything was fantastic – very interesting and informative. Keep up the hard work!”
Almost three-quarters of the local organisations who ran activities for Child Safety Week did so in collaboration with other agencies. And the vast majority - 92% - expected their partnership work to continue long beyond the Week itself.
Child Safety Week 2005 was funded by four government departments (Department of Health, Department of Trade and Industry, Department for Transport and the National Community Fire Safety Centre based in the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister) plus Macfarlan Smith, the company that makes the Bitrex bittering agent, and Ei Electronics, Europe’s leading manufacturer of domestic smoke alarms and carbon monoxide detectors.
Funding from the Department of Trade and Industry enabled us to work with practitioners to develop a new resource to address this problem. The outcome is a 9-minute video fancy a cuppa? concentrating on scalds associated with hot drinks, including the process of making a hot drink using a kettle. The video is supported by training materials and a leaflet for parents and carers.
The primary audience for the video is parents and carers of children under five but it is also used as a training tool with professionals and students. The video is structured so that it can be stopped for discussions to take place when used with parents and carers, or as a training tool for those involved in child safety. A looped version is also be available for use in clinic and waiting room settings.
Additional information on the hot drinks video a copy of the order form are available in the fancy a cuppa publications area
Around 570 severe scalding injuries occur each year in the UK as a result of high bath water outlet temperature. Approximately 440 of these accidents happen to children under 5 years old. Severe scald injuries require many years of lengthy surgical treatment and result in permanent scarring. Although most bath water scalds are preventable, Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) figures illustrate that the number of cases have remained unchanged for several years.
Capt has been working intensively with the DTI and experts in the fields of burn care and plastic surgery, housing policy, litigation, public health, heating technology and building research, to raise the profile of risks associated with high domestic bath water outlet temperature.
Lobbying
Capt worked closely with the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister on the revision of Section (4) Hot Surfaces and Materials of the guidance to the Government's Housing Health and Safety Rating System (HHSRS). This section provides Local Authorities, social and private Landlords with information on potential scalding hazards within housing and will help them to determine the risk probability and health outcomes relating to scalding.
Also following consultation, the Housing Corporation agreed to insert a new recommendation item into the revised Scheme Development Standards, that came into effect on the 1 April 2003. The new recommendation is that
hot water taps to baths should have a thermostatically controlled supply.
For housing associations bidding for social housing grant allocations after 2003 there is a clear incentive to comply with the criteria as defined within the Scheme Developments Standards.
The Housing Minister announced in January 2004 that consideration should be given to amending the Building Regulations to take account of the need to prevent bath scalds.
We have drafted a response to many of the myths published in some newspapers in May 2005. Click here to read what the papers did not say.
Publications and Advice
Capt and the TMVA (Thermostatic Mixing Valve Manufacturers Association) produced a combined information document and technical guide to enable housing associations and heating and plumbing engineers develop a full understanding of the major issues relating to bath water scalds injuries. The technical section of the document will inform housing associations of the current and future technological solutions available on the market. The document, published by the Building Research Establishment in October 2003, is available for downloading here. (Please note that this PDF file is 1.1 Mb). The website www.safehotwater.com provides further information about TMVs.
Additional information about bath water scalds is available in the document Scarred for life, preventing bath water scalds: discussion paper, 2002 and the capt factsheet.
In 2000, capt linked up with Arches Housing Ltd based in Sheffield to address the issue of accidental injuries to children living in rented accommodation. The project was designed to bring together tenants and housing providers across North Yorkshire and Humberside to address accident prevention in and around the home. Badly designed and neglected housing stock was identified by both tenants and housing providers as a factor in injuries to children. Poor communication between tenant and landlord often resulted in repairs going unreported.
The initiative led to the publication of a tenant’s safety handbook, a comprehensive and detailed booklet for use by tenants and housing providers on fault reporting with guidelines on organising tenant sessions. The resource is now available on two disks, CD Rom and pc formats for those working in social housing. Please follow the link to our publications if you wish to order a copy of this resource.
Community development and accident prevention may seem an unlikely combination but when you consider that one in five children attend A&E every year the safety of the areas where children live and play comes into question.
This is what capt found in Northern Ireland. We regularly receive questions about traffic calming, play areas, lack of green and play space, children walking and cycling around dangerous roads and lanes, housing developments that become adventure playgrounds and inconsiderate parking. The list of questions - and the frustration of community groups - continues to grow.
Our response has been twofold:
Firstly we published Child Accident Prevention: a community guide. This can be used as a reference tool for community groups about to embark on a child safety campaign. The guide is divided into sections including why accident prevention is vital, best practice guidelines for committees, how to carry out audits and surveys and guidance on keeping the wider community informed of progress. The guide also looks specifically at road traffic in residential areas as this is a key issue for many community groups. Case studies, relevant contacts and funding information are also included in the guide. This publication is out-of-print but can be downloaded free of charge as a pdf file. (Please note that the file is 1 Mb).
Secondly we provided support to communities. The community guide is an important tool but a community development/accident prevention officer was also available to respond to individual requests for support from the whole of Northern Ireland. While the project was funded, the worker could visit an area to speak directly to members of a community group and provide support from a distance in the following ways:
This project was funded by the Community Fund.
The aim of this project was to establish a home safety check scheme in the Armagh and Dungannon area that would reduce potential risks to children from falls within the home. We offered scheduled and structured home visits to assess falls related risks to children under five years old. Risks to be assessed included actual hazards, lack of equipment and behaviours within the home. By linking child development and risk we hoped to provide developmental stage related advice to parents and carers.
Capt audited more than 200 homes in the scheme. We recruited 15 volunteers who successfully completed training to enable them to perform safety checks. The volunteers were all young mothers and the training increased their knowledge and understanding of why children are injured in the home. It also gave them the opportunity to go out and offer safety advice to parents in their own local community.
Steps you can take to make your home safer:
This project was funded by the Department of Trade and Industry Modernisation Fund.
This Department of Health funded project asked practitioners in PCTs what they needed from capt to assist them, and then set out to develop appropriate resources, including guidelines Preventing childhood accidents: guidance on effective action, an informal monthly email newsletter CAPT News, and two series of regional seminars. Case studies of local practice have also been developed and their dissemination will continue throughout 2004. Click here to visit the publications page for more information about guidelines published in September 2003.
This project is designed to encourage local practitioners to set up home safety check schemes. It has been funded through the Department of Trade and Industry’s Modernisation Fund.
Our emphasis is on developing good practice – encouraging practitioners to tackle real injury issues, target those at greatest risk of serious injury and work in partnership with others. We held three very successful seminars in April, with more than 200 delegates in total, the vast majority from local Sure Start programmes.
This project was funded by the Health Development Agency, which merged with the National Institute of Clinical Excellence in April 2005. The project, which was led by Professor Elizabeth Towner, was a joint initiative with the Universities of the West of England and Newcastle upon Tyne. Work started in July 2004 and was completed by the research team in August 2005.
The aim of the project was to develop and maintain the evidence base on the effectiveness of interventions relevant to children and young adults, and develop good practice guidance on accident prevention for these groups. It pulled together peer-reviewed research with what frontline practitioners know about how to make programmes work successfully in practice
Professor Towner led on the development and maintenance of the evidence base, while capt is leading on the evidence into practice issues and the dissemination of information to practitioners and policy-makers.
The outputs from the project - an updated evidence review covering the 15-24 year age group, and Effective Action Briefings on cycle helmet promotion and the promotion and fitting of smoke alarms - are expected to be published by NICE in 2006.
A document outlining policies relating to child accident prevention in England was drafted as a part of the project and is available from capt and by clicking here.
Capt was part of a research team, led by Professor Elizabeth Towner, University of the West of England, to evaluate the impact of the funding made available by the then Office of the Deputy Prime Minister to fire authorities across England.