Saving lives and reducing injuries...IN THE HOME
Safe At Home
The single biggest home safety equipment scheme of its kind in the world - Safe At Home - concluded. The scheme, which ran in areas with the highest accident rates across England from 2009-11, exceeded its targets. In all, 66,127 disadvantaged families with children under five received free home safety equipment, including fireguards and safety gates.
More than 300,000 families received advice and information from home safety professionals. And, at the last count, 564,198 children's height charts containing accident prevention messages and first aid tips had been distributed and more than 4,000 local delivery providers had been trained and supplied with educational tools including DVDs to be used in sessions with families. Some participating areas have already reported a reduction in accidents.
Maryann Edge and her two children were among those to have benefited from Safe At Home.
"The Safe At Home visit has made me think much more about safety in all areas of the house."
Mum-of-two Maryann Edge of Wolverhampton.
We were delighted to share the success of Safe At Home with Anne Milton MP, the public health minister, when she visited our headquarters in Birmingham. The visit gave the minister the opportunity to meet families who had benefited from Safe At Home and local scheme partners.
As well as accidents prevented in the homes that received equipment and advice, we hope that Safe At Home’s enduring legacy will be sustainable home safety schemes running at a local level.
"I am delighted to see first hand the excellent work that this charity does to help families, particularly those living in more disadvantaged areas, avoid accidents and injuries. Accidents are only too often the cause of much pain and suffering for too many young children and their families. But many accidents can be prevented if we take precautions. The Government welcomes the invaluable work done by the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents and all their local partners in the community, which crucially helps families to make their homes safer."
Anne Milton, public health minister
Ensuring home safety is on the public health agenda
Why? Home accidents cause more than 5,000 deaths and millions of injuries each year. The annual cost to society of home accidents that result in a visit to A&E has been estimated as £45.63billion. Yet, prevention is easy and inexpensive.
What we did: Having contributed to the development of NICE (National Institute of Health and Clinical Excellence) public health guidance, we welcomed the publication of three complementary documents on the prevention of child deaths and injuries.
Our public health campaign in England then began in earnest when we responded to the Department of Health’s Healthy Lives, Healthy People White Paper. We highlighted the need for a nationally-led but locally-delivered strategic approach to home safety. Among our recommendations were that Public Health England should develop an accident prevention strategy as part of its overall strategy for public health and should encourage local authorities to adopt the NICE guidance in local plans.
Improving data collection, reporting and analysis
Why? The UK was once a leader in injury surveillance, which identifies how people are hurt in accidents and enables targeted prevention campaigns, but little data has been collected since 2002.
What we did: Following our 2009 study about the feasibility of collecting injury causation data, an ongoing shortage of resources within pilot hospitals meant the South West Public Health Observatory (SWPHO) was unable to produce its report into how data might best be collected in hospital emergency departments. To overcome this inertia, through our BNFL scholarship fund we agreed to support an innovative approach using touch-screen technology that will collect data in emergency departments in Oxford and Reading.
Supporting partnerships
"On behalf of both of our families, Katrina and I agreed to take part in the video to help raise awareness of the dangers of carbon monoxide poisoning. We feel it is vital that a greater awareness of the dangers is highlighted to the public."
Catherine McFerran, mother of Neil who died from CO poisoning in 2010
Why? Partnership working is an effective way to promote good practice and support the implementation of strategies.
What we did: Partnerships were again integral to our work in Northern Ireland. We chaired the implementation group monitoring progress against the Home Accident Prevention Strategy and Action Plan 2004-2009 (extended to cover 2010/11), and in line with the strategy, continued to support the development of a digital pen project to provide an evidence base for the effectiveness of home safety checks and equipment schemes. Once again, we supported Home Accident Prevention (HAP) Northern Ireland, including local HAP groups’ investigations into the safety of electric blankets in which, disappointingly, nearly three-quarters of blankets failed safety checks. We also supported Age Awareness Week, during which we focused on falls prevention.
Catherine McFerran and Katrina Davidson.
Also in Northern Ireland, we were enormously grateful to Catherine McFerran and Katrina Davidson for their involvement in a carbon monoxide awareness film, following the deaths of their 18-year-old sons Neil and Aaron. The Health and Safety Executive for Northern Ireland (HSENI) was also involved. We have been pleased to support the Gis A Hug Foundation, established in memory of Neil and Aaron, and, in the wake of their tragic deaths and those of three others, to provide information about CO poisoning to government agencies, the media and public.
Recognising our CO work across the UK as a whole, we received a Certificate of Acknowledgement from Gas Safe Register for our commitment to help improve gas safety awareness.
"The MOU is yet another example of how closely RoSPA and the fire service have connected their interventions in order to better protect people and make communities safer...CFOAS is delighted to be associated with RoSPA, and its members look forward to making real progress in the months and years to come."
Assistant chief officer Lewis Ramsay, speaking on behalf of chief officer Jimmy Campbell, CFOAS community safety lead
A Memorandum of Understanding cemented RoSPA’s relationship with the Chief Fire Officers Association Scotland.
In Scotland, we cemented our relationship with the Chief Fire Officers Association Scotland (CFOAS) through a new Memorandum of Understanding (MOU). Promoting best practice and supporting safety professionals are among the aims and we will also work together within the Scottish Community Safety Network.
Partnership working like this was one of the benefits to have come from Scotland's participation in the Child Safety Action Plan initiative, according to the final report produced for the European Child Safety Alliance project. RoSPA Scotland facilitated participation in the project by co-ordinating a group of public and voluntary organisations which formed the Scottish Child Safety Alliance.
Improving the focus on home safety
Why? Home accidents often go unnoticed because they happen behind closed doors, and continuing effort is needed to raise awareness of their causes and how they can be prevented.
What we did: The enormous burden of home accidents on UK society was confirmed through research we commissioned from TRL. The total annual cost of home accident casualties treated at hospital was estimated to be £45.63billion. The figure proved that home safety must no longer be the Cinderella of accident prevention and we hoped it would give renewed impetus to prevention campaigns.
We were grateful to the Clifford family for the support they gave to our blind cord safety campaign.
This sum was presented for the first time at our National Home Safety Congress, which took place in Glasgow and investigated different interpretations of the value of home safety. Fergus Ewing MSP, then Scotland’s minister for community safety, opened the event.
In England, a young advocate from the Changemakers Foundation worked with us to investigate how young parents receive home safety information. Among her recommendations for improving the dissemination of safety messages was a greater use of social media.
Improving physical safety
Why? Simple design improvements can prevent home accidents, as past developments including fire safety and safety glazing requirements, have demonstrated.
"Since I launched the first blind cords campaign led by RoSPA in Scotland, awareness of the dangers of blind cords to young children has been increasing. I am delighted to see that the good work achieved so far in North Lanarkshire is being built upon with the campaign being rolled into Borders, Fife and South Lanarkshire."
Fergus Ewing MSP, who was Scotland’s minister for community safety at the time of the blind cord project launches
What we did: The deaths of five toddlers who became tangled in looped blind cords in 2010 gave renewed urgency to our window blind safety campaign. We worked with the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) and the British Blind and Shutter Association (BBSA) in contributing to a revision of the relevant European standard and promoting the Make It Safe campaign. In Scotland, we worked with local authority and emergency service partners to distribute safety leaflets and 14,000 cleats (around which cords can be tied) to families in North Lanarkshire, Borders, Fife and South Lanarkshire - projects funded by the Scottish Government. Since receiving the safety information, 60 per cent of parents and carers who participated in the North Lanarkshire project said they were unlikely to buy blinds with looped cords because their knowledge of the dangers had increased, and 69 per cent said they had discussed the risk of blind cords with others. A Memorandum of Understanding cemented RoSPA’s relationship with the Chief Fire Officers Association Scotland.
In England, the BBSA kindly donated 60,000 cleats and we distributed these with safety leaflets to families and organisations that work with children. We created a new blind cord safety section on our website and offer our thanks to the families of two-year-old Muireann McLaughlin, who died in 2008, 18-month-old Leah Edwards, who died in 2010, and three-year-old Beth Clifford, who had a near-miss in 2010, for their support.
"We were incredibly lucky. I just want to make sure that other parents are aware of the dangers of looped blind cords – not everyone is as lucky as we were. We are really pleased to be involved with RoSPA's campaign and hope that it will reach as many families as possible."
Tracey Clifford, mother of three-year-old Beth who had a near-miss blind cord accident at her Derbyshire home
In Scotland, work began on the first phase of 119 new-build homes, being provided by Fife Council and local housing association Kingdom Housing, which will contain the physical accident prevention measures outlined in RoSPA Scotland’s Can the Home Ever be Safe? policy document, including window restrictors and handrails.
Delivering home safety training
Why? Training home safety professionals enables them to reduce accidents through the initiatives they run in their own communities.
What we did: Among the year's successes was the delivery of training to 202 practitioners with a home safety remit in Northern Ireland, of whom more than 90 per cent took and passed an optional City & Guilds assessment.
Also in Northern Ireland, we developed, piloted and rolled out a CO awareness-raising workshop for practitioners within the statutory, community and voluntary sector. We are grateful for the guidance we received from the HSENI and funding from the Public Health Agency.
Providing expert product safety advice
Why? There has been significant progress in product safety in recent years, but new issues continue to be raised that require our input at a regulatory level and in response to individual enquiries.
What we did: We welcomed the implementation of the Pyrotechnic Articles Regulations, bringing together many existing strands of explosives legislation and introducing a "CE" marking requirement for all fireworks. Subsequently, we were pleased to become part of a group formed by BSI (British Standards Institute) to agree a strategy for a new standard for firework selection boxes.
With Chinese lanterns becoming increasingly popular, we took enquiries raising concerns about their use and developed our first guidance on the issue.
We were delighted to learn that, further to our involvement in updating the British Standard related to pen caps, proposals to work on revising the relevant international standard were accepted.
We were saddened to receive reports of children being killed by electric gates on the drives of private residences, and we joined an industry working group established to look into the issue.
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