President's Message
Welcome to the RoSPA Annual Review 2011/12
Lord Jordan of Bournville CBE
President
The pages that follow are full of the many stories of how we worked to fulfil our mission to save lives and reduce injuries during 2011/12.
You will find details of our work in five key areas of safety - home, road, leisure and workplace safety and safety education - plus our overarching campaigns and communications functions, developments in the RoSPA Membership department and our extensive programme of events. We also invite you to read about some of the “behind the scenes” activities that contribute to the positive working environment at RoSPA and we are happy to set out our own performance on work-related health and safety; after all, this is what we encourage other organisations to report on.
The stories you will read in this review are not just “RoSPA stories”; they are the stories of all those with whom we have been privileged to work. Whether the father of a little girl who was killed in a blind cord accident, a teacher who entered the Great North Run to raise money for us in memory of her cousin, a Government minister or a RoSPA member, training delegate or award winner, it is the people with whom we work who really tell the story of what we do and why we do it.
People like these fuel our continued commitment to the cause of accident prevention.
Colin Wallace, home safety training development officer (Northern Ireland), and Lord Jordan of Bournville open RoSPA’s new headquarters in Edgbaston, Birmingham.
However, if this commitment needed any further reinforcement, it very recently received it in the form of revelatory new data from the Office for National Statistics. The figures, outlined more fully over the page in reports from our Chief Executive and Deputy Chief Executive, firm up the evidence base for why action on accident prevention is so crucial and why it should be a top priority for all those involved in the planning and delivery of public health.
Now, not only do we know how many people are killed in accidents each year, but we also know just how many life years are lost as a result - years that these accident victims would have had ahead of them had their premature deaths not occurred. And we can see that of all the causes of death considered 'preventable', accidents dominate the list of years of life lost.
This revelation gives us yet another story to take into 2012/13 and beyond. We will do all we can to ensure it is heard and acted upon by those responsible for setting public health priorities.
Finally, I would like to offer my most grateful thanks to everyone who has been part of what RoSPA achieved during 2011/12 including the policy-makers and practitioners at all levels of public health across the UK who have already been receptive to the evidence base for accident prevention, our project partners, the sponsors and speakers without whom there would have been no RoSPA events or awards, our thousands of campaign supporters and, of course, RoSPA’s employees, members, national committees, volunteers and trustees.
Lord Jordan of Bournville CBE
RoSPA President
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