20th April 2016
A guest blog by Katrina Phillips, Chief Executive, Child Accident Prevention Trust on CAPT’s Child Safety Week.
Child Safety Week is the Child Accident Prevention Trust’s annual community education campaign, raising awareness of childhood accidents and how we can prevent them.
It’s a great opportunity to run fun activities and engage with families. Last year, we reached 242,000 parents and 208,000 children through activities and events in local communities.
In this time of change, it’s also a great opportunity to raise the profile of the health visiting service, highlight the work you do to help prevent accidents and visibly address High Impact Area 5.
Katrina Phillips, Chief Executive, Child Accident Prevention Trust
Sign up and download for free
This year Child Safety Week runs from Monday 6 to Sunday 12 June. Our theme is Turn off technology for safety – recognising how quickly serious accidents can happen when we’re distracted, and how our phones and tablets are an increasing source of distraction!
You can download your free action pack from our website www.childsafetyweek.org.uk. This will arm you with safety facts, fun activity ideas and links to useful resources.
Thanks to our sponsor, Bitrex, you can also order your free Taste Test kit. Parents can taste the bitterest substance on earth, then eat milk chocolate to take the taste away. It’s a great ice-breaker for a session on accidental poisoning and the nasties often found lurking under our sinks.
If you sign up to our Child Safety Week mailing list, you can get exclusive downloads and all the latest offers direct to your inbox. With Fireman Sam just on board as a sponsor, make sure you don’t miss out on fun!
There’s no limit to the number of sign-ups, so do encourage your skills-mix colleagues to sign up too.
And if you work in Scotland, thanks to support from the Scottish Government’s Community Safety Unit, we can send you a free printed action pack and poster when you sign up to Child Safety Week.
Delivering High Impact Area 5 – Child Safety Week as an opportunity for health visiting
Accidents are a leading cause of death and serious injury for under-fives. That’s why reducing hospital attendance and admissions from accidents is a High Impact Area for health visiting.
With public health teams now responsible for commissioning for under-fives in England, health visiting services tell us that they’re looking for ways to raise their profile and the value of their work.
Child Safety Week is a great way to do this. Last year, of parents who submitted evaluation forms after attending a Child Safety Week activity:
• 87% reported they had learnt something new.
• 90% reported they would be doing something differently.
Some health visiting teams also use Child Safety Week to develop partnerships with other local services including children’s centres, road safety and fire safety. With so many agencies getting involved, it’s a great excuse to pick up the phone.
As one participant in Child Safety Week 2015 said:
“Register with CAPT. Use the downloadable resources. Take part – the promotion of everyday simple steps to make the house a safer place for children and families can have the most profound effects. Simple stuff saves lives!”
