RoSPA Press Office : Press Release
November 20, 2007
LEADERSHIP CALL TO CUT CHILD ACCIDENT DEATHS IN SCOTLAND
A coalition of organisations working to prevent deaths and injuries among children and young people in Scotland is calling for stronger political leadership after a report published today revealed gaps in the approach to child safety.
Members of the Child Safety Action Plan for Scotland Steering Group are making the call in light of the findings of a study that assessed child safety performance across Europe.
The lives of 62 Scottish youngsters who died in accidents in a single year could have been saved if Scotland matched the injury death rate of the best-performing country in Europe, according to Scotland’s Child Safety Report Card, published by the European Child Safety Alliance.
More than 40 per cent of unintentional-injury-related deaths among those aged from 0-19 could have been avoided if the rate had been the same as in Sweden, which topped the table of the 18 countries assessed under the report card system. Despite lagging behind Sweden, however, Scotland’s unintentional injury death rate for that age group was better than that in 12 of the other countries.
Scotland’s report card says “stronger leadership from government is required” on issues of child safety, with “child safety leadership” receiving just one-and-a-half stars out of a possible five. A lack of national injury data is also identified.
But there is praise for the ability of the Scotland’s child safety practitioners to plan and deliver their projects, with “child safety capacity building” receiving five stars.
The report card, produced as part of the European Child Safety Action Plan Project, assesses Scotland’s overall grade for child safety performance as “fair”.
The steering group – a coalition of public and voluntary sector organisations - is tasked with taking forward the Scottish arm of the project, which aims to prevent unintentional injuries to children and young people across Europe. It consists of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents, Child Accident Prevention Trust, NHS Health Scotland, Children in Scotland, Road Safety Scotland, NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde, Chief Fire Officers Association Scotland, Scottish Accident Prevention Council and Association of Scottish Local Authority Health Improvement Officers.
Elizabeth Lumsden, of RoSPA, said: “The Child Safety Report Card identifies some of the major successes in injury prevention work. Achieving top marks for capacity at the practitioner level reflects the hard work of dedicated safety professionals across Scotland.
“But we cannot ignore the fact that Scotland scored poorly in relation to its national political leadership of child safety and lacks the data that can enable injury problems to be identified and prevention programmes to be properly targeted and evaluated.
“The steering group supports the report card’s recommendation that stronger leadership from the Scottish Government is required in order to prevent needless deaths. The report card, and our coalition, specifically suggests a government-endorsed national strategy and the allocation of enough financial resources to ensure that child safety work is co-ordinated and based on evidence of what works.
“We acknowledge that safety and injury prevention are everyone’s responsibility, but we believe that the Scottish Government’s Health and Wellbeing Directorate is best-placed to co-ordinate a unified national approach to safety across government departments and other agencies.”
The report cards and accompanying country profiles were produced using data from 2001, during which 150 children and young people died from injuries in Scotland. The unintentional injury death rate per 100,000 people aged 0-19-years-old was 10.95 in Scotland, compared with 5.77 in Sweden.
The 17 other countries issued with report cards were Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Netherlands, Northern Ireland, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Spain and Sweden.
Scotland’s report card will be available on the RoSPA website at 11am on November 20 at: www.rospa.com/news/scotland/childsafetystrategy/reportcards/index.htm
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