Local Government and Transport Committee, 13 Jun 2006

Meeting date: Tuesday, June 13, 2006

Official Report 234KB pdf

---

Petition

---

Home Safety Officers (PE758)

I call today's meeting of the Local Government and Transport Committee to order. Welcome to the meeting.

The first item is further consideration of petition PE758, on home safety officers. Our witnesses are Bob Sutherland, community safety manager for Angus Council, and Laura McDermott, home safety projects officer for Dundee City Council. I am pleased that representatives of two local authorities have come along to express their views. Members may wish to note that we asked the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities to set out a generic local government position on the petition. A paper outlining COSLA's views was circulated along with the witnesses' submissions.

I will give the witnesses the opportunity to make some introductory remarks to the committee, after which I will open the floor to questions from members. Laura McDermott will have the opportunity to speak first.

Good afternoon. I am Laura McDermott, home safety projects officer for Dundee City Council. I have been employed by the council for 15 years as a home safety officer, with a full remit for home safety in the city of Dundee. I hope that this afternoon I will have a chance to explain the work in which I have been involved and why I am here on behalf of other Scottish home safety officers to discuss making home safety a statutory function.

All local authorities would welcome any increased resources that may be made available to support and to develop further home safety solutions at local level. It is right that all councils should see home safety as a high priority within the overall concept of community safety, and that it should be facilitated through local community safety partnerships and community planning partnerships. However, in my view there is no need to impose statutory obligations on local authorities, such as the requirement to employ dedicated home safety officers. Authorities should retain the flexibility to decide, along with their local partners, how best to develop solutions and proactive measures that meet their local needs.

I have no problem with the belief behind the petition—home safety should be seen as a priority issue. I also have no problem with home safety officers or with those authorities that see them as the most effective way of co-ordinating resources. However, not all local authorities see such officers as the best way of addressing the situation. I do not support the imposition of statutory requirements in that regard. Circumstances and local practice differ from area to area, and the priority needs in a largely rural authority may differ from those in a wholly urban community. A one-size-fits-all approach is, therefore, no guarantee of consistency and effectiveness.

Either individually or collectively, what estimates do you have of the costs that would be incurred by making the employment of home safety officers a requirement?

We have not costed it fully, but I imagine that the cost of simply employing an individual at the appropriate level for such a post would be in the region of £30,000.

Local authorities employ home safety officers on the administrative and professional pay scale from AP3 to AP5. There is no additional budget for any projects or work that we undertake. I imagine that Mr Sutherland's figure is based on a home safety officer's salary scale. To allow officers to undertake projects and do certain work, the figure would have to be larger. I know from doing the job that what we can achieve is limited when much of our time is spent applying to funding bodies for additional funding. A budget would make long-term strategic planning possible.

My next question might be difficult to answer, as I do not know whether an assessment has been made. If accidents were prevented, the cost of aids and adaptations to people's homes after they had fallen or of repairing damage to properties because of fires that could have been avoided had proper advice been available to tenants would be saved. Have the savings that could be set against the cost of safety officers been estimated?

Angus Council has not done that. However, through active partnership working we have schemes and projects in Angus that involve our community safety partners and address home safety and fire safety. We have projects that provide security and home safety fitments such as smoke alarms to people who are referred as requiring them to make their homes safer. I am aware of no estimate of the likely cost savings from such actions.

The Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents estimates that the annual cost to society of Scottish home accidents is £200 million. I do not have the report with me, but if anyone is interested I can provide the source of that estimate.

It is estimated that a single hip replacement costs £12,000. Falls are one of the most common accidents in the home, predominantly among older people. Members can imagine that when an older person falls it often results in a hip injury.

The Child Accident Prevention Trust has a document, which I can forward if anyone wants it, that states that treating one severe bath scald case costs £250,000. That is only the financial cost; it does not include the cost to the family through loss of work and trauma.

On that basis, do you agree that an investment of £30,000 in a home safety officer would be more than offset by the savings to local authorities from accident prevention?

What matters is outcomes and outputs rather than inputs. I question whether appointing an individual with a particular title would guarantee that what councils do through their local community safety partnerships would be done better. All that home safety officers do can be provided simply through the progression of partnership working and the development of home safety as part of the overall community safety agenda.

So you do not believe that cost is a factor.

I would welcome any additional funds to help us to develop and progress what we are doing, but I do not think that appointing one additional individual would alter all that Angus Council is doing—and we are doing a great deal in home safety and accident prevention.

Michael McMahon mentioned setting the cost of employing one home safety officer against the costs that the national health service would otherwise incur. As Mr Sutherland has said, much good work is being done by authorities that do not have home safety officers.

I have been a home safety officer for 15 years. Local authorities that employ home safety officers have noticed that there is a low turnover and that it is worth investing in training and resources for such positions because they are long lasting. We advocate a single function for home safety officers because if theirs is a multifunction position officers might look for other jobs, turnover could be higher and the investment by authorities in training to widen officers' experience might end up going elsewhere.

The four home safety officers whom I have spoken of have been in the job for more than 15 years, and any investment made in us has been over the long term. Although it is important to train various caring professionals in home safety, there is a big turnover in those areas and investment is diluted if they have other remits or go on to other jobs. However, a home safety officer's sole job is to try to prevent accidents in the home.

I was interested in what was said about the cost to homes and housing departments following accidents. I go to pre-school establishments and talk to children in nurseries about hot, burny things. It is more holistic to start giving advice to children at that age and then carry it on throughout their lives. We do not wait until they have a home accident and become a statistic; we work to the long term. We get in there early to tell them about the dangers and get them thinking about safety throughout their lives, as people do at work and on the roads.

Road safety was mentioned, which is covered in statute, but there are fewer accidents on the roads than in homes. For the reasons that I gave, I believe that single-function officers are more advantageous than multifunction ones.

Laura McDermott said that she could make statistics available to us. Could you arrange that?

Certainly.

I have a question before I bring in other members. We are debating whether a service should be provided on a statutory basis or left to the discretion of local authorities to provide according to local circumstances. Local authorities tackle home safety issues in a wide range of ways. Has COSLA or any other body taken an overview of whether certain local authorities have made a bigger impact than others on reducing home accidents? If so, has there been any attempt to share best practice among local authorities?

I am not aware of any.

ROSPA collates best practice information. Practitioners in home safety who are members of the home safety Scotland network meet every two months to discuss projects that we feel have been successful and those that we might not repeat. Such meetings are invaluable, because although money and time are restricted, we are aware of the importance of sharing best practice. ROSPA collates best practice information and home safety Scotland has a website that keeps us up to date with what everyone is doing in their different ways.

As Mr Sutherland said, there are different ways of doing things. The crucial crew programme provides experiential learning to primary 7 pupils, although such programmes are called different things and are tackled differently depending on the local authority that runs them. However, we learn from each other.

As Mr Sutherland said, it is important to focus on the local level, because rural incidents vary from urban ones, for example. Home safety officers take such matters into account and are in a position to personalise their approach.

In Angus, we call crucial crew safe Angus, for obvious reasons. We have an experiential learning project that involves all primary 7 pupils throughout Angus. Each year, 1,400 10 and 11-year-olds go through it. We have recently had an independent academic review of the project, which found that there are significantly higher levels of awareness in the young people who have gone through the crucial crew experience than in those who have not. We can do such things without having a home safety officer to co-ordinate them. They are done through the active participation of partners who have a shared responsibility.

I meant to add a comment to my answer to the question about whether there is any evidence of differences in areas that have home safety officers compared with those that do not. It has been said that it is difficult to get figures on the number of people who attend accident and emergency departments as a result of home accidents. The kind of information that we get varies from area to area. The City of Edinburgh Council has a good working relationship with Edinburgh's accident and emergency department and it is able to access good figures. Ninewells hospital has recently gone over to a computerised system, and I am negotiating with it to receive figures to give me an idea of the size of the home accident problem in Dundee. A statutory home safety duty would enable better working with accident and emergency departments so that we could get such figures and have a baseline from which to monitor our progress. That is another reason for having a duty.

Mr Sutherland, how much of your time is taken up with home safety and what other aspects of safety are you involved in as community safety manager?

Home safety takes up a small percentage of my time. I sit on our local community safety partnership, which oversees the community safety agenda, including the community safety and antisocial behaviour strategies that we have in Angus. At the practitioner level, a much greater percentage of time is spent on home safety issues. ROSPA has provided training for our housing staff, social care officers and community health officers who make home visits so that they are aware of home safety issues and can take action, give advice or refer people on to agencies if a greater degree of assistance is required with home safety.

I am also responsible for the council's approach to antisocial behaviour and I manage the community warden scheme. All the community wardens have basic training on giving advice to people with whom they come into contact and who have home safety issues that require to be raised.

Do most councils have home safety officers, but by some other name? You talked about home safety officers meeting every two months. Do you go to those meetings? Does somebody from each of the 32 local authorities attend?

I do not go to those meetings and I am not aware that Angus Council is represented at them. However, Angus Council regards home safety as a priority, as I am sure is the case for other councils that do not employ home safety officers. Imposing a statutory requirement to promote home safety on local authorities would be inconsistent with having shared responsibility and a shared approach and might have an impact on the successful way in which we approach the matter at the moment.

You have a co-ordinating role rather than a hands-on role. We have heard from other authorities that, because of the diverse range of people who are involved in accident prevention, it would be helpful to have home safety officers because they would offer a more co-ordinated approach.

I feel that we have a successful working arrangement with our partners in the community safety partnership. We have projects and initiatives, and I suggest that we are addressing the issues as well as any authority that has a home safety officer.

These days, we hear much about the fire brigade having more of a prevention role rather than sitting around the fire station waiting for accidents and fires to happen. How much of the job of a home safety officer does the fire brigade undertake?

The fire brigade has an expanding role in home safety. In Angus, Tayside fire and rescue service is actively involved in our safe as houses project, which involves the fire service doing home assessments for smoke detectors, alarms and so on. It is also currently taking the lead role in introducing another project to address the percentage of kitchen fires that are caused by hot fat in chip pans. Our project will assess individuals in their homes and we will replace open pans with thermostatically controlled deep fat fryers as a means of reducing the risk of fire in the home. We are also in early discussions with Tayside fire and rescue service about the introduction of domestic sprinkler systems in homes, initially in council property, but we are arranging a demonstration that will include other social landlords and private landlords. The fire service is working well and increasingly with Angus Council, and it is responsible for a range of issues. It is quite happy to work with us.

I also have a close working relationship with the fire brigade, which also carries out home fire risk assessments. We have an agreement that on its referral checklist is the handyperson service that I set up, so if the fire brigade goes to someone's home to carry out a fire risk assessment—which is solely about fire risk and not general home safety—it can ask the client to agree to have their name forwarded to us so that a general home safety risk assessment can be carried out.

We have negotiated further referrals, because obviously it does not stop there; other issues can be picked up, such as whether a person requires insulation or requires an occupational therapist or someone else from the caring professions. That is all documented and, with the client's permission, it can be passed on as part of a more holistic approach.

It is interesting that some councils have home safety officers and some tackle the issues differently. I am approached by councillors up and down the land, and one of the first things that they say to me is that the Scottish Executive and Parliament are too prescriptive in setting out rules and regulations that they have to abide by. Local authorities are precisely that—local—and they can respond to the demands of local circumstances and local people. Local councillors also have responsibility. If we were to recommend to the Scottish Executive that it should take the legislative route and demand a statutory requirement for home safety officers, would it not be somewhat heavy-handed? Would it not be somewhat prescriptive? Would it not be the opposite of what we should be doing?

I agree. It mirrors what I said in my opening remarks. Overprescription is not necessary. Local authorities should be left with the flexibility to work with their local community safety partners to develop the issues and resolutions that best fit their areas. As I have said, the problems of a rural authority might be different from those of an urban one.

Overprescription would impose an obligation on local authorities as one of the partners, but responsibility is shared. Imposing a statutory requirement would be inconsistent with that shared responsibility and approach and it might cause other partners to consider whether it is their job to be involved or whether the home safety officer has all the responsibility. I like to think that we have the system that works best for us in Angus and that we should be allowed to progress with it.

On my functions in Dundee, I mentioned that I attend pre-school establishments. I also go to primary and secondary schools, mother-and-toddler groups, the brownies and the cubs. I help adults with special needs to make the change from the accommodation in which they live to independent living and I go to sheltered housing, lunch clubs, probus clubs and rotary clubs. If I were not employed to do such things as a home safety officer in Dundee, nobody else would go to those places as requested to give home safety advice. A home safety officer is required so that someone is responsible for going to such places to talk about accidents that have happened to people at different stages of their lives. It is not enough to say that something might happen when someone is 35. Accidents depend on developments and circumstances and people must be kept updated on what might happen at the next stage of their lives.

Obviously, a lot of good work is being done in other authority areas. I mentioned home safety Scotland meetings. However, never more than 15 of the 32 local authorities—I am being generous—are represented at those meetings. In other words, fewer than half of Scotland's local authorities are represented and more than half are not represented, which means that, although we do not need to know such things, it is difficult to gauge the extent and quality of input that other local authorities have on home safety. Making home safety a statutory function would provide quality. If it was a statutory function and there was a budget, there would be appropriate training, targets to meet and more organisation.

On costs, many local authorities do a lot of home safety work and have people in the caring professions who have been trained in home safety by ROSPA, which is admirable, but it would be interesting to find out from local authorities how much that costs. ROSPA charges for its training at a competitive price, but we are talking about a fair sum. As I have said, caring staff come and go. How can they be updated with new information? They are not recalled to ROSPA training courses to be given the latest information. However, home safety officers in local authorities receive all the updates and have up-to-date knowledge of current legislation and information, which they can take into the community at all levels.

You have given us a comprehensive outline of the commendable work that you and your local authority do, but my point is that you are already doing that work without the Scottish Executive and the Scottish Parliament saying, "You must do this," and making it a statutory requirement for you to do it. It is great that your council has decided to do the work that you have mentioned, but another council may decide to operate slightly differently. Why should the Scottish Parliament insist that everybody else in Scotland should work through home safety officers in the way that Dundee City Council does? Surely that is not the right approach.

I think that it is. What I have described is all that I do. Mr Sutherland outlined the home safety work that he can do, but he has other commitments. One hundred per cent of my working day is committed to reducing the number of accidents in people's homes. Why should people in the Dundee City Council area feel safer than people who live in local authority areas in which there is no such commitment to home safety? It is commendable of Dundee City Council to invest the money, given that there is no statutory requirement. The system would be fairer if every person had the same opportunities in relation to home safety as those who are served by Dundee City Council.

It is unusual for local authorities to come to the Scottish Parliament to say that they want us to legislate to ensure that they do something. That is an unusual about-turn. I have always found through interaction with councillors throughout the country that the opposite is the case: they keep telling me that the Scottish Executive or Parliament is doing too much and putting too many burdens on them and they ask us to let them get on and run their communities the way they want.

If I came across that argument, I would ask them why they felt that it was fair enough to legislate for road safety officers, given that there are fewer accidents on the road than in the home.

I apologise for missing the first part of your presentation. If I ask about something that you have covered, please say so. Given all the groups that you meet, it sounds as though you have a good grounding for being a future member of the Scottish Parliament, should you ever consider that career.

You talked about projects, about going into schools and to meetings of the brownies and so on. How do you get into vulnerable households, use statistics from the hospital and link up with other agencies to find out where more elderly people live?

I do that in three ways. First, I have set up a kiddie care system, which is a Dundee child-equipment loan scheme for vulnerable families who cannot afford stair gates and fireguards. Someone takes the equipment to the house and fits it. Training has been given, so if the person who fits the equipment sees a vulnerable family and feels that a referral could benefit the family, that is done.

Secondly, I have a close working relationship with health visitors. If in carrying out their normal duties they come across something that they feel is outwith their remit, they can refer it to me. Given the contacts and network that I have, it is possible to take an holistic approach.

Thirdly, I link with social work services, such as meals on wheels and the laundry services, and I carry out training for home carers. There is no cost for their training because I have had Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents training. I give them updates and, with the client's permission, they can report back on any concerns that they have.

How can you take an holistic approach, Bob?

We do basically the same thing with our Angus safe as houses project—a partnership project that is funded partly through the community safety partnership award and partly through core Angus Council funding. Any of the persons who routinely call on people's homes are able to refer individuals to the project, just as Laura McDermott described people being referred to her. The project is predominantly for victims of crime, elderly people and other vulnerable groups. If people are referred to the project, a police crime-prevention survey and a fire prevention survey will be carried out and other requirements are considered, such as handrails or other aids to help people who are unable through age or incapacity to access parts of their homes. The same system as in Dundee applies through management by a project management group, and it does all the things that Laura McDermott has talked about. Vulnerable people, elderly people and other groups can be referred and can be provided for in the same way.

Mr Sutherland referred to the scheme in Angus, to which people have to apply for or be referred as a victim. With regard to the three approaches that we have in Dundee, referrals are made, at a point when people are not yet victims, by employees who are carrying out their remit in bringing certain matters to our attention.

Mr Sutherland also mentioned that some of the core funding for that scheme comes from the local authority—I am sure that it is the same in other councils. That brings me back to my earlier point that it would be interesting to find out the extent to which different authorities already use some of their core funding. If they do, what is the cut-off point at which they feel that that is no longer an imposition? Is it an imposition if they use part of their core funding? That might be worth considering.

My second question follows on from what the convener said earlier. I think that you both agree that it is time to get an overview of what is happening in the various local authorities and to get some statistics. Is that correct?

I certainly agree with that.

I agree.

I think that we have established, from the evidence that Laura McDermott has given and from previous evidence from the Scottish Accident Prevention Council, that there is no evidence of lower accident rates in local authorities that have home safety officers than in local authorities that do not have them.

It has been said that that is down to the fact that there is no baseline. We would love to have a baseline. We would love accident and emergency departments to give us figures that would allow us to monitor the number of accidents that happen in the home, so that we could start to see the difference that is made by intervention. Until accident and emergency departments commit to giving us those figures, we have nothing on which to base such a proposition. We would welcome that information.

We started this discussion on the basis of a petition from the Scottish Accident Prevention Council. When it gave evidence to us, we were advised:

"The SAPC is a charity that is funded by membership fees from local authorities and health boards."—[Official Report, Local Government and Transport Committee, 30 May 2006; c 3753.]

If the Scottish Accident Prevention Council, which has been going since 1931, if I remember the evidence correctly, is a joint initiative of local authorities and health boards, is not it reasonable to think that we should by now have a common baseline among the health boards and the local authorities that would enable us to measure whether a particular structure or organisation had been more or less effective in reducing the number of accidents?

There have been conferences and seminars on that very point. The problem at the moment is that different health boards collect their statistics differently. We have argued—probably since 1931—for an approach that would allow the figures to be compared. We want comparable figures; however, until all the health boards collect their figures in the same way and are willing to share that information with other agencies, that will not happen.

In terms of the timing of the petition and the request that it makes, would it not be better for you first to sort out your baseline and then to test the proposition that one structure or model for community safety is more or less effective than another? If it turned out that the structure in your local authority was more effective, that would be the time to come to Parliament and show us overwhelming evidence that there should be a mandatory requirement that everybody use that structure because it had been proved to be effective. Are not we putting the cart before the horse, here?

I hope that a prerequisite of home safety becoming a statutory function will be access to figures. As I keep saying, until we have those figures and that baseline nobody can prove any impact that they are making.

Creation of the post of home safety officer will not, however, create the statistical baseline that you want. The statistical baseline will be created as a result of collaboration, through the Scottish Accident Prevention Council and others, between local authorities and health boards—which is something that could have been done years ago.

There are two points to be made. First, as I said a second ago, I had hoped that making home safety a statutory function would include a provision to allow access to the figures for that very reason—to create a baseline. Secondly, without a baseline, we cannot prove the figures. I want access to those figures, with home safety as a statutory function.

I would also like to ask about something that you said in response to Mike Rumbles's question. Do you really think that people in Dundee feel safer in their homes than people in Brechin do?

I obviously cannot answer that because I have never asked them.

I think you said that they do feel safer.

I said that it is only fair that people should have the same access to safety in Brechin as they do in Dundee. If there is no one going round Angus doing that work 100 per cent of the time, how can there be the same access to safety? However, I do not have evidence, so I cannot say categorically that that is the case.

When Mr Black—the petitioner—gave evidence, he suggested that there should be a home safety officer in each local authority area in Scotland. I questioned whether one person could really do the job in a city the size of Glasgow and he assured us that that was the case. Does not that suggest that, if one home safety officer can do the job for a city of 600,000 people, it would be somewhat extravagant to have a single home safety officer doing the job for a council the size of Clackmannanshire Council?

I am here to represent Dundee City Council and to talk about the work that I do with home safety. I am not suggesting for one minute that I can tell you how that will be achieved. It is up to the Scottish Parliament to decide whether to do it per capita or per authority.

The petitioner said that there should be one officer per local authority area. You have experience of doing the job adequately for a city the size of Dundee and you are occupied full time. Does not that suggest that you would need at least two people to do the same job in a city the size of Glasgow, and that a part-time job would be sufficient for an area the size of Clackmannanshire?

I do not know what price you can put on reducing accidents in the home, but—

We do not know that they would be reduced because we do not have any statistics.

Exactly. We need that baseline.

To return to the answer that I was giving before I was interrupted, Jim Black mentioned there being one officer per authority; I return to my point that working from a baseline would give us proof as to whether one such officer would be sufficient. If we had a baseline and were not creating such posts on a per capita basis, we could say, "Well, we're not getting round everybody, so we need more officers." We need to know what the situation is at the moment.

In Angus, we take the view that there should be shared responsibility, using professionals from all agencies and departments, including departments of the council, who routinely visit people in their homes. Providing them with expertise and using them will cover a far greater area much faster than one individual could cover in a large rural area with a small population, such as Angus.

The petition calls for local authorities to be placed under a statutory obligation to employ home safety officers. Would it be better if there were a statutory duty on local authorities simply to carry out the function of delivering home safety?

As I said in my opening remarks, I have no problems at all with the functionality. Home safety should be given as high a priority as Parliament and local authorities think it should have. It is how that function will be delivered that is in question. It is a matter of outcomes and outputs rather than inputs. If Parliament were simply to impose a statutory responsibility to create a post for one individual, would a local authority comply with the statutory requirement by putting somebody in the job, and would it matter what that person then did? It is about getting guarantees that what needs to be done will be done, rather than simply about putting a name against a specific post.

I am sure that we are all persuaded that accidents at home cause fatalities and serious injuries and are therefore a serious topic. It is good to have input from the witnesses. However, it is more difficult to move from diagnosis to prognosis, or from identifying a problem to working out an effective solution. If local authorities alone had legal responsibility for fulfilling the function, would not that cause problems with agencies such as the health service, many of whose staff may well be working daily to improve home safety? In other words, should we consider whether the legal obligation should apply not solely to local authorities, but to health authorities, too?

As I said, overprescription is inconsistent with a shared approach. If one partner in a partnership—in this case, a local authority—has a statutory requirement imposed on it, the danger is that other partners may think that the responsibility clearly lies elsewhere, so their contribution to the partnership approach might diminish. It would be far better if collective responsibility were carried through in whatever shape or form the matter is progressed.

So there could be an obligation on more than one type of public body.

That is certainly worth considering.

If bodies are given a legal duty to try to improve home safety in ways such as Laura McDermott has mentioned, should each body have at least one accountable officer who has ultimate responsibility for the delivery and for the body's performance of the function?

It would be for the local authority or local partnerships to decide where that function and responsibility lay.

The committee has heard about the good work that many local authorities carry out, but without someone to co-ordinate that work, there can be a lot of duplication. To give a quick example, when I started work on the handyperson scheme, I discovered that Dundee care and repair was setting up a similar scheme, as was the social work department. If I had not had a networking and a co-ordinating role, three separate handyperson services would have been set up. Having one co-ordinator or home safety officer who has an overall remit for home safety provides co-ordination, a network and the support of a multi-agency approach.

That brings us to the end of our questions. I thank Bob Sutherland and Laura McDermott for their evidence. We will take more evidence from an Executive minister before we come to a conclusion on how to deal with the petition.