Share because you care this Child Safety Week

1 June 2021

Ahead of Child Safety Week (7-13 June) Katrina Phillips, Chief Executive of the Child Accident Prevention Trust (CAPT) reflects on how sharing vital safety advice with families has never been more important – and how this year, CAPT have made it easier than ever.

Child Safety Week (7–13 June) is the Child Accident Prevention Trust’s annual community education campaign – prompting thousands of safety conversations and activities.

The last 15 months have taught us a lot about how we connect with each other. We adapted; our work and home lives often blurring into one.

Many parents and carers found themselves spending more time at home with young children, unemployed, on furlough or juggling work with childcare, and missing the valuable contact in the community they had been used to, and in some cases relied on.

Reaching these families and sharing trusted, practical advice to prevent serious harm has never been more important – one in nine emergency hospital admissions for Scottish children are due to an accident.

Additionally, 80% of accidents to under-fives are in the home, with children from the poorest families more likely to be killed or seriously injured. New research by Glasgow University reveals how under-fives living in disadvantaged households are more likely to suffer severe and multiple injuries in the home.

That’s why this year for Child Safety Week we are asking you to share because you care, by passing on valuable advice and safety knowledge to parents to help keep children safe.

As we all continue to adapt to different ways of working, we understand that the way in which trusted practitioners engage with families has also changed, with group sessions and face-to-face support giving way to phone calls and digital communications. While some in-person contact has resumed, our resources must be flexible, so important safety messages reach those who will benefit from them most – at home, online or in the community.

On the Child Safety Week area of our website, you will find easy-read factsheets, session cards with accompanying workshop outlines, display materials and five factsheets translated into five languages – Urdu, Bengali, Arabic, Polish and Punjabi – for speakers of English as an additional language. Resources are free to download and share in whatever way practitioners are working with families. There are more resources than ever before, with even more to come.

Of course, keeping children safe from serious accidents goes further than Child Safety Week, which is why we have developed our resources to support accident prevention work throughout the year.

Everything has been designed with flexibility in mind, offering practitioners a year-round resources hub beyond Child Safety Week, to support vital contact with vulnerable families and help keep children safe.

The Child Accident Prevention Trust would like to thank Building Safer Communities in the Scottish Government for their generous support of Child Safety Week 2021.

Let’s keep sharing.

Katrina Phillips is CEO at Child Accident Prevention Trust

Click here to find out more about Child Safety Week

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