Home Safety Congress
- Type of event: Two day residential Congress
- Attendees: 85
- Learning on offer: Presentations, workshops, informal networking
- Venue: Glasgow Crowne Plaza Hotel
Experts from several different fields came together at RoSPA's Home Safety Congress to investigate different interpretations of the value of home safety, and discuss whether a value could be put on quality of life.
The economic burden of accidents at home provided the backdrop to this year's very successful event, and added a practical financial backbone to the moral argument for reducing accidents in the home.
Louise Walter, a statistician from TRL, presented her report "Re-valuing the Cost of Home Safety" for the first time, revealing that the total annual cost of home accident casualties treated for their injuries at hospital - around 2.7million people each year - is estimated to be a staggering £45.63billion.
And this is a conservative estimate: it doesn't include the 4,000 fatalities each year, or those people who only need to visit their GP.
With this figure in mind, congress also looked at the value of evaluation. It is important to measure the effectiveness of home safety interventions to ensure that resources are targeted properly and funding is put to best use - particularly important during difficult economic times.
The two-day congress was supported by the Scottish Government, with additional sponsorship from Strathclyde Fire and Rescue. It was opened by keynote speaker Fergus Ewing MSP, Scotland's minister for community safety, who spoke about the current Year of Home Safety in Scotland.
Home safety is the "Cinderella" of safety issues, with most accidents and injuries happening behind closed doors. But with unintentional injuries being the fourth most common cause of death in the UK and Europe - and the situation even worse in deprived areas - Mr Ewing spoke passionately about the need to do more to prevent many needless deaths and injuries.
Mr Ewing's speech focused on prevention and the costs of not dealing with home safety issues. As an example of good practice, he talked about a pilot blind cord safety campaign, which is funded by the Scottish Government and involves a variety of partner organisations, including RoSPA. He said: "The blind cord awareness campaign, which we launched in Scotland with the McLaughlin family, has been very successful to date with 10,000 leaflets and cleats distributed in North Lanarkshire.
"This has been an excellent example of partnership working, as Strathclyde Fire and Rescue, together with health visitors, have been instrumental in handing out and fitting the cleats in homes. We hope the campaign will have a real impact on home safety, and raise awareness among parents and carers - and we are looking forward to the campaign being rolled out across Scotland and the wider UK."
Campbell Millar, project manager for "Good Places, Better Health" at the Scottish Government, outlined the project so far. Launched in December 2008, it focuses on the environment and how it impacts on health and safety. The links between deprivation and poor health and accidental injury are well known, and it is hoped that more will be done to help the most vulnerable members of society where they need it most.
He said: "The relationship between the environment and health is extremely complex, and we know now that traditional approaches to raising awareness of health and safety are not working. We need new ways of thinking, and 'Good Places, Better Health' is a great start."
The need for a UK-wide injury database, the subject of a long-running RoSPA campaign, was revisited by Errol Taylor, RoSPA's deputy chief executive. He said: "People keep finding new and creative ways to injure themselves, so it is vitally important that data is collected in order to monitor accident trends. Without this data, it is notoriously difficult to target funds effectively - which is more important than ever in a recession."
Scotland is a little ahead of the rest of the UK when it comes to gathering accident and injury data, and it is hoped that England, Wales and Northern Ireland will follow suit.
One possible solution to the UK's data problem was presented by Jennifer Parkinson, senior environmental health officer for the Eastern Group Environmental Health Committee in Northern Ireland. The Home Safety Digital Pen Database project aims to provide an accurate evidence base of home safety checks and associated interventions that should reduce the number of accidents occurring in the home.
Part of Northern Ireland's home accident prevention strategy, the project aims to agree a common approach to home safety data collection across the country. The data collected by the digital pens will be used to produce reports and inform future projects, as well as placing data into the public domain.
One example of how the project could be used to inform future projects came from the statistic that 76 per cent of older people did not keep a light on at night, and 39 per cent of older people did not turn on a light when they got up at night. To reduce the risk of falls, it was identified that older people would benefit from the provision of low energy light-bulbs and lamps that come on when you touch them.
There was a hands-on demonstration of the digital pen database project during an afternoon workshop session, giving delegates an opportunity to use the pens themselves.
Among the other popular congress workshops was one focusing on evaluation, led by Gail Errington from the University of Nottingham. The session allowed delegates to share their experiences, problems and solutions when it came to evaluating their home safety interventions.
The workshop built on Gail's earlier presentation, entitled "The Value of Evaluation", which explained the purpose of evaluating training and education interventions, and showed why it was so important to do so.
She explained: "Evaluation is informed by programme aims and objectives from which we can identify measurable indicators of success. It's vitally important to evaluate all projects in order to identify if it is efficient and effective and find out how to improve it. It is also necessary in order to justify and secure funding, to share good (and bad!) practice and inform the development of future programmes."
And Leslie Nish, senior health improvement officer from NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde, reported on a campaign to raise awareness of the safe storage of hair straighteners. The campaign was launched after an increase in children admitted to hospital with serious burns from hair straighteners. It involved the distribution of heat resistant bags into which straighteners can be put immediately after use. Leslie also told delegates about evidence regarding hair straightener injuries that she had collected from elsewhere in the UK.
As the TRL report showed, home accidents cost society a phenomenal amount of money - not to mention the human cost - and yet delegates were still of the opinion that the problem of home injuries was largely overlooked. Congress demonstrated that this was changing - with support from public servants like Mr Ewing being extremely valuable - but there was still much more to do.
Sheila Merrill, RoSPA's home safety manager for England, said: "The cost to society of home accidents and injuries is absolutely staggering. We have long been aware of the cost in terms of human suffering, but now we have an up-to-date figure for the massive economic cost - and a conservative estimate at that!
"The most vulnerable are the very young and older people, particularly those in deprived areas. It is very encouraging to see new initiatives and successful partnership working aimed at improving life for those who are socially disadvantaged. We hope that more work in this area will encourage more people across the UK to take up the challenge of preventing accidents at home."
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