Share your experiences and help us support child safety in the home

East Sussex County Council and its partners are working together to reduce and prevent childhood unintentional injuries. In East Sussex, the rate of hospital admissions due to unintentional and deliberate injuries in children aged 0-4 years continues to remain significantly higher than the England average, with Hastings and Rother having some of the highest admission rates in the South East. Often, we think of ‘accidents’ as events that are unintended, or things that just happen and therefore there is nothing we can do about them. However, the reality is that accidents are predictable events and are frequently preventable.

As part of our programme of work to reduce unintentional injuries in the under 5s within the home, we carried out a survey with local parents, asking them how they receive and access information about child safety. The survey has a range of questions which were designed to help us understand this topic further.

Survey responders were required to state what parenting and family topics they thought about the most. The top two were ‘my role as a parent’ and ‘my child’s development’. Interestingly, ‘reducing child accidents in the home’, although important, was slightly less important compared to other topics.

Respondents stated and/or agreed with the following:

• They receive information and advice about child safety from a very wide range of sources, including NHS professionals and family members.
• Health Visitors were stated as their preferred source of child safety information, followed by parenting websites and other family members.
• Parents don’t routinely, or only rarely, look for accident prevention and child safety information online.

Responders also stated and were more likely to agree with the following:

• They want to learn about dangers in their home which could lead to accidents and unintentional injuries.
• They want to understand how they can prevent accidents and unintentional injuries at home.
• They want to look for practical advice on how to make their homes a safer environment for children.
• They want to understand what their children are capable of at their age and stage of development.

Who took part

98 parents completed the survey. 90% were female and over 70% of responders had one child under 5 years old. 25% of responders had attended hospital with their child because they had an accident. 87% were White British, 5% were from other White backgrounds, and 3% didn’t answer the question. 93% were heterosexual and 3% were bisexual. 23% of responders stated they had physical or mental health conditions or illnesses lasting or expected to last 12 months or more.

We have learnt several key insights relating to how parents receive and access information relating to child safety in the home. We will use some of these insights, alongside the published evidence, to further develop our programmes to support families to reduce child accidents. This may include updating our child safety campaigns, and promoting the Start for life website and its free email subscription service.