HOUSING NEW ZEALAND

CONCERNED ABOUT HOUSING NEW ZEALAND HOME SAFETY?

You’re not alone! Little four-year-old Phillip Hurrell’s serious scalds which he received in a Housing New Zealand home when an unstable oven fell onto him, have highlighted safety issues in Housing New Zealand homes once again.

In 1995 Safekids submitted a Report to Housing New Zealand entitled "Safe as Houses? Recommendations for Childsafe Housing New Zealand Homes". In this Report, the issues of design and stability of stoves purchased by Housing New Zealand (HNZ) was raised as a priority issue. The story of little Troy also featured in this Report, and it is remarkably similar to that of Phillip’s. Twenty two-month-old Troy, like Phillip, had pulled down the oven door and climbed onto it. Troy received scalds to 25% of his body, spent 48 days in hospital and wore a tight pressure garment for the following eighteen months. When examined, the Atlas oven involved in the incident was found to be so unstable that even the weight of a large roast dinner on the open oven door, could have caused it to tip.

Since 1995, and producing the Report, Safekids have been meeting regularly with HNZ representatives, but progress towards meeting many of the priority recommendations which were made, has been slow. Certainly Housing New Zealand has made some very positive moves in some areas and they should be commended for those moves. A recent edition of Safekids News highlighted HNZ’s smoke alarm programme as a positive child safety initiative. However, a lack of progress and a lack of demonstrated commitment beyond meeting legal requirements in some areas of child safety are of concern to Safekids.

"The issues of stove stability and design were raised with HNZ over five years ago, along with many other child safety issues," says Shelley Hanifan, Safekids Director. "Phillip’s injuries could have been prevented, if Safekids advice had been followed in Phillip’s home."

"Surely some of the huge amounts of money being made by HNZ should be going into ensuring the safety of their largest and least powerful tenant group," says Shelley. "If it is not spent on injury prevention, by providing safe environments for children in HNZ homes, it will continue to be spent on treatment and rehabilitation from injury, via health, as is clearly demonstrated by the cases of Phillip and Troy. This is not only damaging to children and their families, but it is also extremely short sighted."

Safekids are hoping to take our concerns, and our five-year-old ‘Safe as Houses?’ Report, to the New Minister of Housing, Mark Goesche to discuss concerns over the lack of progress being made by HNZ in child safety.

Great news for Waitakere City

The study found the total number of children hospitalised decreased from 710 in 1997 to 667 in 1998. This drop is the first drop in six years and is a reversal of a nation-wide trend. The figures have been attributed to the success of Safe Waitakere – the project run in association with Waitakere City Council.

The Co-ordinator’s View Margaret Devlin has been employed as the Community Injury Prevention Co-ordinator since the programme’s establishment. Margaret attribute’s the success of the programme to the partnership approach of the working groups such as the Child Safety Working Group that operate under the banner of Safe Waitakere. "We have learnt a huge amount over the last four to five years. We have become a lot more focussed and much more able to determine which issues are likely to be effective. We also have a lot of fun, which is really important", says Margaret.

Between 1997 and 1998 there was:

• A 33% reduction of falls in playgrounds. This was the first decrease in numbers and rates since 1994.
• A 17% reduction in other falls.
• A 22% reduction in road injuries. Whilst pre-school numbers remained constant, all other age groups decreased.
• A decrease by nearly a third of cycle injuries for the 5-9 year old age group.
• A decrease by half of burns from fire. However, due to low numbers no real conclusions can be made.

Child Injury Hospitalisation Rates

Interventions

Safe Waitakere uses a cross-cultural approach drawing on the many agencies and networks in the community. A mix of interventions has been used, some ‘tried and true’ and some very innovative interventions. Some of these have included:

Falls Prevention Writing to stair manufacturers asking them to add stair guards to their designs; Advocacy around not using baby walkers; Encouraging Council to bring all public playgrounds up to safety standards; Sport’s programmes promoting the use of protective equipment.
Road Safety Extensive campaigns on child car seats with a range of agencies covering education, advocacy and enforcement; Promotion of three car seat hireage schemes; An interactive display at the City’s Vehicle Testing Station; Training for health and community workers
Fire Safety A city wide "Firesafe Waitakere" campaign to promote smoke alarms; Promotion of safe hot water temperatures; Development of a community education package based on home safety for burns. This has now been developed into a package for schools.

Whilst Safe Waitakere is delighted with the outcomes to date of the project, there is still a lot of work to be done. Safe Waitakere will continue to work on an inter-agency basis to address key injury issues in the City. This year, they are also taking up a new challenge of targeting Council and it’s role in terms of safety through its various functions of regulator/enforcer, service provider and influencer. This has meant looking at the entire range of services Council manages from issues of town planning, building consents, liquor licensing and parks and playgrounds to ensure that safety remains high on the agenda.

"There is no shortage of ideas, and we are extremely fortunate to have such wonderful people from a range of sectors committed to helping achieve a safer city", says Margaret.

WELL DONE SAFE WAITAKERE!

13 - 20 OCTOBER 2000

As many of you will already know the themes for Kidsafe Week 2000 are: 0 - 4 age group - Falls Prevention 5 - 14 age group - Cycle Safety. Safekids are well advanced in the planning of Kidsafe Week 2000 and are currently developing the printed resources that will support these themes, so that these are available for coalitions at the Information and Planning Days.   During May, Sue will be off around the country convening the Regional Kidsafe Week Information and Planning Days. Confirmed dates for each region are as follows

Please take the time to pencil these into your diaries now, and specific invites will be sent out to you through your local regional contact person.

We're all looking forward to another busy and successful year of Kidsafe Week activity.

SAFE ROUTES TO SCHOOL

'SAFE ROUTES TO SCHOOL' NATIONAL CONSULTATION PROJECT UPDATE

The 'Safe Routes to School' National Consultation Project is nearing it’s completion! Key stakeholders were notified that the Project had to be put on hold in October of 1999 due to staff illness, but it is now back on track.

Those of you that were involved in the consultation workshops held throughout the country in the middle of 1999 will soon get the Draft Report for comment. Feedback is being requested once again from those with an interest in 'Safe Routes to School' and those involved in the consultation project - this time about the Report itself, and the issues and recommendations raised within it.

Following feedback, the final version of the Report will be forwarded to the National Reference Group, which is made up of key nominated representatives from key national agencies involved in the 'Safe Routes to School' process. These representatives will be asked to respond to the Report on behalf of their organisation.

Rebecca Williams completed her role as National Project Co-ordinator to return to her Regional 'Safe Routes to School' Facilitator role in December 1999, but she is maintaining an active role in the Project Management team to see the project through to completion. The Draft Consultation Report has recently been submitted to the Project Management Team, and after input from them will be provided to wider networks.

At present Helen McCracken and Irene Johnson are managing the Information & Resource Centre and welcome inquiries from anyone involved in child injury prevention. "Recently, we’ve even had enquiries from workplace management, concerned to help make employees homes safer for their families" says Helen. "Many organisations are starting to promote home safety as good business practice, both to reduce absenteeism as well as being family friendly and showing genuine concern for employees beyond the workplace." The Centre also works closely with Safekids other staff to provide information and resources for Safekids projects Work for the first quarter of 2000 has focussed on baby walkers, burns and scalds, cycle injuries and falls.

From left to right - Helen McCracken and Irene Johnson looking over a resource at Safekids Info Centre.

One hundred and twelve items were added to the collection over the past 3 months. Some items that were felt would be of particular interest to Safekids News readers are:

ADVOCACY & INFORMATION

"Change it! How to influence public policy" Published by The National Resource Centre for Adult Education and Community Learning. This book provides basic information to community groups and people involved in community education to enable them to gain advocacy and lobbying skills and become empowered to make changes in society.

"On the record: a practical guide to health information privacy" Prepared by the Privacy Commissioner. This guide is based on the Health Information Privacy Code 1994 and Privacy Act 1993.

FARM SAFETY

"Child safety on farms: a framework for a national strategy" Produced by Farmsafe Australia. The aim of this strategy is to report on key issues and to provide a framework for the development of an Australian National Strategy for Child Safety on Farms. This book is a valuable addition to publications dealing with the safety of children in a rural environment.

PLAYGROUNDS

The November 1999 issue of New Zealand Local Government included three articles on playgrounds, focussing on neighbourhood rather than school playgrounds. Issues covered are: health and safety standards; the quality of equipment and safety surfacing and the question of cost.

Safekids has recently purchased Hospitalisation Discharge and Mortality data sets from the Health Information Service for the years 1994 to 1998. The data relates to children aged 14 and under, who have been hospitalised for, or died from, unintentional injuries.

The hospitalisation data set contains detailed information about the classification and causes of injury (E-code), age, gender, ethnicity and the place of residence of the child. The mortality data set contains similar demographic information and details relating to the cause and, in some cases circumstances, of death.

These data sets are central to injury prevention work. An analysis of data on injuries and fatalities can assist us to uncover patterns and predict injuries. This, in turn, can be used to design effective, well-targeted injury prevention strategies. It is also important for us to have access to New Zealand data as child injury and mortality rates can differ in important ways from injury rates in other countries.

These data sets are central to injury prevention work. An analysis of data on injuries and fatalities can assist us to uncover patterns and predict injuries. This, in turn, can be used to design effective, well-targeted injury prevention strategies. It is also important for us to have access to New Zealand data as child injury and mortality rates can differ in important ways from injury rates in other countries. Alex Woodley, a research analyst, has been contracted to analyse these data sets. Her first project involves analysing the data sets for Safekids’ Fact Sheets. The data sets have already been used to examine burn and scald injuries in the Auckland Region. A Burns and Scalds Regional Fact Sheet is available from the Safekids Information Centre. We are currently analysing data relating to falls, home drive-overs and drownings.

Alex Woodley at her computer scrolling through hospitalisation data.

Bits and Pieces

From our early data analysis, we have learned….

• One child has died in a baby walker. The little boy, who was aged under one year, drowned when he and the baby walker that he was in, fell into an unfenced swimming pool.

• 16 children were hospitalised following bites from cats, sharks, moray eels and rodents. 783 children were hospitalised following dog bites.

• 44 children were hospitalised following incidents with guns, with the exception of air guns (BB guns).

• There were more than 5000 hospitalisations for child poisonings, and nearly 3,600 of them were aged under three years old.

• 182 children were hospitalised following injuries they received as pedestrians, hit by cyclists.

For more information see above, or call us on (09) 820 1190.

Poni taking over from Rachel for three months Rachel Algar (Safekids Strategist) is taking three months off to tour Europe. "During the time that I am away, we are fortunate to have Poni taking over parts of my role to support the important work of local injury prevention groups in the Auckland Region," says Rachel. "Poni is already at home with child injury prevention and she has the networks. I am sure that everyone will enjoy working with her." Poni Dowding, previously from Safe Waitakere, will be doing two to three days a week with Safekids. In addition, Helen McCracken will be taking over some of Rachel’s role until her return.

Safekids Farewells Isabel Isabel Bird left Safekids in December 1999 to travel to Ireland and Britain. The other members of Safekids staff were extremely envious of her travels, and also sorry to see her go! Isabel was with Safekids for close to three years. During her time at Safekids, Isabel worked as Safekids Information Centre Manager, answering information enquiries from throughout New Zealand and overseas. However, Isabel also contributed to Safekids and child injury prevention well beyond that role. For example, she co-ordinated the Child Safety Stream of the Recent ‘Community Safety’ Conference in Waitakere City. Isabel was also a regular contributor to Safekids News, and the section ‘INFO NEWS".