The next item of business is a members’ business debate on motion S4M-11329, in the name of Clare Adamson, on home safety kits. The debate will be concluded without any question being put. I ask members who wish to speak in the debate to press their request-to-speak button as soon as possible, and I remind guests leaving the gallery that if they could do so quietly, it would be much appreciated.
Motion debated,
That the Parliament notes the evidence relating to home safety equipment fitting schemes and considers that there is a need for local schemes to be administered; notes that young children are most likely to be involved in accidents in their own homes in Central Scotland and across the country but that often the correct safety equipment, with supporting education, can prevent unnecessary suffering from burns and scalds, falls and poisonings; acknowledges the forthcoming evaluation report on Scotland’s Home Safety Equipment Scheme, and notes the ongoing contributions by ROSPA to accident prevention and safety awareness in the home.
12:34
First, I thank the members who supported the motion and those who will speak in the debate.
It is the stated wish of the Scottish Government that Scotland be the best place in the world to grow up—an ambition that I am sure is shared across the chamber. However, if we are to achieve that ambition we must first acknowledge and tackle the areas in which Scotland’s report card could be better. As a councillor in North Lanarkshire, I was nominated to be a member of the Scottish Accident Prevention Council’s home safety committee. It was in that role that I became aware that in the area of non-intentional injury Scotland’s record could be much better. Indeed, the European child safety alliance’s country report card made for challenging reading at the time.
The alliance’s latest report in 2012 was produced as part of the TACTICS—tools to address childhood trauma, injury and children’s safety—project. The project is described as a
“large scale, multi-year initiative working to provide better information, practical tools and resources to support adoption and implementation of evidence-based good practices for the prevention of injury to children and youth in Europe.”
The European public health alliance and partners in more than 30 countries are involved in the project, including the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents—RoSPA—in Scotland. One of the project’s objectives is to review and expand the set of child safety action plan indicators that continue to monitor and benchmark progress in reducing child and adolescent injury as countries move from planning to implementation of good practices.
We are often fond of comparing ourselves to Nordic countries, but the latest European report card shows that non-intentional injury is a leading cause of death among children and adolescents aged zero to 19 in Scotland. In 2009, 106 children and adolescents in that age group died as a result of injury. If the rate of injury deaths in Scotland could have been reduced to the level in the Netherlands, which is one of the safest countries in Europe, it is estimated that 47 of those lives might have been saved.
The Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health Scotland recently produced the report “A policy response for Scotland to the report ‘Why children die: death in infants, children, and young people in the UK’”. Recommendation 8 in the section entitled “Reducing deaths from injuries and poisoning” is:
“Local authorities and health boards should prioritise children’s safety, and through utilising resources such as health visitors and home safety equipment schemes, educate and equip parents and carers to keep their children safe, with a focus on water safety, blind cord safety, and safe sleeping.”
Given that we are undoubtedly dealing with a social justice issue, I was delighted to learn earlier this year about a Scottish Government project that works in conjunction with RoSPA to tackle the issues in Scotland. I take this opportunity to welcome to the gallery some of the staff from RoSPA Scotland. I put on record my thanks to them for acting as the secretariat of the cross-party group on accident prevention and safety awareness and for their continued support of the group.
Scotland’s home safety equipment scheme was a pilot project that aimed to provide home safety equipment to families in specific areas in Scotland. The project was based on the success of a similar project in England that was created by RoSPA and which resulted in 66,000 families in England receiving safety education and equipment. The project in Scotland supplied and fitted home safety equipment for 800 families. Each family also received a resource pack of information that helped to raise awareness of accidents and how they can be prevented. That awareness raising complemented the equipment provided by the scheme, which included safety gates, window restrictors, non-slip bath and shower mats, fire guards, locks for kitchen cupboards, corner cushions, blind cleats and door jammers.
Investment in the scheme has contributed towards the health and wellbeing of young children by providing families with the skills and knowledge that they need to make informed decisions on injury prevention, allowing children to develop in a secure environment and ensuring a healthy and safe future. The areas involved in the project included the Western Isles, Edinburgh, East Lothian, West Lothian, Midlothian, East Dunbartonshire, West Dunbartonshire, Glasgow, Aberdeen and Inverclyde.
However, as with all such issues, the question is how we can prove that something works—how do we prove the negative of an accident having been prevented? I am delighted today to highlight some of the key findings of an independent evaluation of the scheme, which was conducted by SMCi Associates on behalf of RoSPA.
Scotland’s home safety equipment scheme was a preventative scheme that reached 841 vulnerable families and a total of 1,616 vulnerable children under the age of five over the course of 13 months. Each family had an average of nine items of safety equipment and the cost of delivering the scheme was £295 per family, or £153 for each child. We can compare that with the cost of hospital treatment of a child aged up to four who has suffered a non-fatal home accident, which the most recent data estimates to be £10,000.
Some 99 per cent of the families that were involved considered that their home was safer. When professional stakeholders including family support practitioners, health visitors and fire officers were asked for their views, 85 per cent said that the scheme helped to make children safer and healthier, 76 per cent said that it prevented accidents and unintentional injuries in the home and 75 per cent said that it prevented accidents and unintentional injuries to children under the age of five. One of the parents who participated said:
“I had been stressing about getting safety gates and other equipment in my home for a while but could not afford it. I was overjoyed when I heard about this scheme. Thank you!”
The scheme also helped to identify risks, as an individual home safety risk assessment was built into its delivery model, tailoring the project to each individual family. The home safety risk assessment included a prescription for the provision and professional installation of equipment through the scheme, ensuring that boxes did not remain unopened and equipment uninstalled in homes. All 841 clients had equipment fitted, with an average of nine items per family. The scheme also offered a home fire safety visit conducted by the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service.
Awareness of home safety was also a key element in delivery, and most of the people involved became more aware of the risks around their home.
I am grateful for the opportunity to highlight this valuable pilot project today, and I look forward to the debate. I am interested to hear from the minister how Scotland’s home safety equipment scheme will develop in future.
12:42
I congratulate Clare Adamson on securing this members’ business debate on home safety kits. We can all agree that the issue needs our attention and consideration in order to prevent accidents and, in some cases, deaths in the home, many of which are totally preventable through simple safety awareness, understanding and equipment. I also put on record my personal admiration for the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents, whose tireless work in trying to prevent accidents around the home has been saving lives for more than 100 years.
The success of Scotland’s home safety equipment scheme speaks for itself. Clare Adamson mentioned some of the statistics. Some 85 per cent of the professionals involved, including family support practitioners, fire officers and health visitors, said that it helped make children healthier and safer, and 75 per cent said that it prevented accidents involving children under five. As for the families, almost 100 per cent of them felt safer as a result of the project.
I want to emphasise the importance of health visitors because of the current contention around the named person legislation, which built on the Labour Administration’s getting it right for every child proposals and which the court is discussing today. I will not talk about the court case, but the view has been expressed to me that the named person provision is an interference with the family. However, home safety is a good example of the named person’s importance, because health visitors who go into households can put people in touch with groups such as RoSPA that could supply appropriate equipment to ensure that homes are fit for purpose for young people.
Scotland does not have a good record on child deaths. As Clare Adamson said, at least 47 deaths could have been prevented in 2009 if we were at the standard of the best of the European countries, which she reminded us is the Netherlands.
This is not just about families and children; it is also about the cost to the national health service. Our NHS is under massive pressure, and anything that reduces that has to be welcomed. I welcome the fact that the Government has finally announced that we are going to have four major trauma units. That will prevent some deaths related to the 1,200 most serious accidents in Scotland. The major trauma units in England have demonstrably reduced mortality by 20 per cent.
The cost of the scheme is about £235 per household—or about £153 per child, given that the 800 vulnerable families who were involved in the scheme had a total of 1,616 children between them. Indeed, given that the cost of treating a child who has suffered a home accident can be as much as £10,500, the investment in such schemes, following an assessment, is clearly worth while.
I want to spend what time I have left talking about the campaign to ban looped blind cords that my colleague Gordon Banks has been supporting in Clackmannanshire. In 2008, a two-year-old girl in Clackmannanshire tragically became entangled in such a cord, resulting in loss of life. At the time, it was estimated that every year two people died as a result of getting caught in such cords. America has already realised how much of a danger those cords are to children; indeed, it banned them 15 years ago. Gordon Banks has been supporting the young girl’s parents, who have been campaigning tirelessly for the same rules to apply in the United Kingdom. I do not know whether that issue can be dealt with under devolved powers, but it seems to me that Government action, at least to raise awareness, might be helpful.
It can never be acceptable for our nation to delay taking action when there is such a simple remedy to prevent the death of children. I am pleased that the campaign has had some success, with the announcement by the European Commission of new rules to improve the safety of blinds, but I know that Gordon Banks continues to fear that until the industry fully designs out looped blind cords, the threat cannot be completely removed.
The cost of investing in such schemes or campaigns is far outstripped by the cost that might be incurred by the public purse because of accidents. More important, however, is the effect on all those families. The home safety kits, which can contain as few as nine pieces of often quite simple and professionally fitted equipment, greatly reduce the risk of injury, and the fact that 99 per cent of families felt safer is testament to the scheme’s success.
I encourage the minister to consider further possibilities for rolling the scheme out further and to ensure that health visitors and named persons assess every household for a kit in order to reduce Scotland’s rather poor record on child deaths.
12:47
I thank Clare Adamson for lodging the motion for debate and highlighting an important issue that affects thousands of young children and their families in Scotland every year.
Although the number of deaths attributed to accidents in the home has decreased dramatically over the past 20 years, far too many children are still killed or injured in accidents that are often easily prevented. A few simple pieces of equipment, backed by education for parents on how to identify hazards, can be all that it takes to make the difference between life and death for many children in their own homes. For that reason, I support the roll-out of Scotland’s home safety equipment scheme across the country.
The average family home contains a number of hazards that might not appear particularly dangerous initially but which can cause severe injury or even death. Young children under five are particularly vulnerable; because of their naturally inquisitive nature and because children in that age bracket tend to spend more time at home, the home is, in fact, the most common place for them to have an accident.
Anyone with experience of toddlers knows only too well how much mischief a little one can get into when their parent’s back is turned, even just for a moment. A kitchen cupboard or a flight of stairs can prove very tempting for a young child with a sense of adventure who has not yet fully developed a natural instinct for danger; in some instances, that can result in accidents involving poisoning, choking, suffocation, falls, burns or scalds.
NHS Fife, which serves my constituency, recorded in 2010-11 132 emergency hospital admissions of children under five years old as a result of unintentional injury in the home. Many of those accidents could have been easily prevented with just a few simple measures; indeed, equipment such as door jammers, safety gates, fire guards, blind cleats and window restrictors can be all that it takes to make our homes accident proof.
However, many families lack knowledge about how to prevent accidents at home. Families also lack the money to buy the safety equipment that is required. That is why Scotland’s home safety equipment scheme has been valuable to so many disadvantaged families in the pilot areas.
The most obvious advantage of home safety kits is their potential to save lives, but there are wider benefits. Reducing the number of accidents in the home eases the burden on NHS emergency treatment and follow-up care. That is a key consideration at a time when acute services are under increasing pressure and budgetary restraints.
Another positive outcome of the scheme is the reassurance that it provides to parents and carers by equipping them with knowledge and understanding of hazards in the home, as well as tools to help prevent accidents from occurring. The scheme offers people peace of mind that the family home is as safe as it can be.
I applaud the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents for its innovative home safety equipment scheme in England, which was the inspiration behind the pilot project in Scotland. I also commend the Scottish Government, RoSPA in Scotland, the local authorities in the pilot areas and the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service for their collective efforts and commitment to making the scheme a success.
Fife was not chosen as a pilot area for the scheme, which is unfortunate, because that would have been advantageous to many families in my constituency. The scheme should be rolled out throughout Scotland, so that every disadvantaged family can receive assistance to protect their children from preventable accidents in the home.
I thank Clare Adamson again for helping to raise awareness of home safety kits by lodging the motion for debate. I look forward to reading the forthcoming evaluation report on Scotland’s home safety equipment scheme, which I hope can be used as a tool for improving and enhancing the scheme, with a view to expanding it across Scotland in the near future.
12:51
I congratulate Clare Adamson on bringing the matter to the Parliament today and I offer my support in principle for the objectives behind her motion.
I also congratulate RoSPA on its work over the years. Indeed, I first became aware of RoSPA through its involvement in the production of the public information films that were shown on television back in the 1960s, in the days when we had only two channels and there was nothing very exciting on. The falls, scalds and electrocutions that took place in those films were a lesson to a young child that there was danger in the home. It became increasingly obvious that there was no shortage of evidence to support the claim—often made and known to be accurate—that the home is one of the most dangerous environments that we experience.
Awareness of the dangers that we face in the home still plays an important role for individuals—adults and children. Increasingly, new dangers come along. Everybody is fairly clear that if there is a young child in the house, getting the fire guards and stair gates up is a priority, but there are other dangers. Members talked about the danger of looped cords on blinds, and people are increasingly aware of that issue. Modern heating systems can become faulty and produce carbon monoxide, which is another danger in the home that we need to be aware of.
I fully support the principle behind the motion: informing people of dangers and ensuring that safety equipment is available to them is a vital step in improving safety in the home, for adults and for children. However, personal responsibility must remain at the forefront of our minds. We need to ensure that people are aware of danger and do not fall into the trap of thinking that someone has absolved them of responsibility.
Therefore, I will finish on a typically Tory note. We cannot wrap our children in cotton wool. We can make the environment as safe as we can, but we must make children understand the danger that they are in and take responsibility for not subjecting themselves to danger, even at an early age. We all grow up far too early in this modern world, but we can never be too young to understand the limits of our own mortality.
For that reason, I would like us to follow the example of that period back in the 1960s, when there were perhaps more opportunities on television for the occasional public information film to frighten young children, as I was then, into realising that there are dangers out there and we should behave a bit more responsibly.
12:55
Like the other members who have participated in the debate, I put on record my thanks to Clare Adamson for sponsoring the debate and to all those members who supported the motion, which enabled us to have this important debate. I also recognise Clare’s wider work in convening the cross-party group on accident prevention and safety awareness—that is not the most succinct of titles, but it is an important group to have in the Parliament and I was pleased to attend a recent meeting.
Like Richard Simpson and Alex Johnstone, I thank RoSPA for its tireless work over many years to promote safety in our homes. When RoSPA approached the Scottish Government with the proposals for the Scottish home safety equipment scheme, we were pleased to be able to provide funding for the scheme. Other members have outlined the costings associated with it. The aims of the scheme and the approach taken chimed incredibly well with the Government’s approach, which is about prevention and early intervention. They also chimed with our aim to make Scotland the best place in the world to grow up in.
In response to the points that Richard Simpson raised, I will address the child-centred GIRFEC approach that is set out in the Children and Young People (Scotland) Act 2014, although I will have to be careful because of the on-going legal challenge to a particular part of the act. I recognise the potential for the named person to signpost families to get extra support, particularly in relation to safety. As someone who is about to re-engage with the midwife and health visitor services, and given my experience with my own wee boy, I know the importance of the advice and support that health visitors and midwives can give to families at times of particular vulnerability. Richard Simpson’s point is well made that we must use all our activities to ensure the safety and wellbeing of our children and young people across Scotland.
That chimes particularly well with the aims of our early years collaborative. The Government is firmly focused on reducing inequalities and making sure that every child—the EC in GIRFEC stands for “every child”—has the best start in life and is ready to succeed. That is why we have developed the policies that we have and why we introduced the legislation that I just mentioned. As Richard Simpson says, it was not just the Government that thought of GIRFEC; the approach has been supported across the chamber.
However, the sad fact is that unintentional injury disproportionately affects the most vulnerable groups in society, notably children, older people and those who live in areas of deprivation. As the report points out, there is a substantial financial cost of that both to the NHS and to wider society—an estimated £2 billion cost to Scottish society annually when all groups are taken into account. The most recent data available show that, for a child up to the age of four, the cost of a non-fatal accident that happens at home but is treated in hospital is £10,600—Clare Adamson also mentioned that figure.
Nevertheless, it would be wrong to focus on the finances alone. Unintentional injury is the major cause of death in childhood, and each incident represents a young life and its potential lost, not to mention the traumatic effect on parents, siblings and wider family members. Sadly, the rate of death from injury is consistently around a third higher in Scotland than in England and Wales, and there is good evidence to show that the rate of reduction of child injury in the UK lags far behind the rates in other European countries. As Clare Adamson stated, if the rate in Scotland were the same as the rate in the Netherlands, 47 young people’s lives would have been saved and they would have been able to go on to flourish and contribute to Scottish society. We need to reflect on the human cost of these tragedies.
We cannot be complacent, as there is still much for us to do in this area. As Clare Adamson said, Scotland could do better. In reflecting on what Alex Johnstone said, I think that there is a balance to find in making sure that we do not wrap up our children in cotton wool. There is a slight difference, but I appreciate that, in our work on the play agenda and getting children outdoors, we must allow children to experience and manage risk, so that they go on and manage that better as adults in later life. However, today is about making sure that we create the safety parameters for children in their homes and recognise RoSPA’s work and its instructive evaluation report.
All of us in the chamber, as well as those working with, supporting and nurturing children and young people, want to make Scotland the best place to grow up in. Part of that must be to make sure that our children are safe. The Scottish home safety equipment scheme has taken us a bit of the way along that path. I think that we can agree that the evaluation report published today demonstrates the success of the scheme.
We count that success on a number of different levels. First, there is the number of home safety kits fitted: 841 families and 1,616 children under the age of five are safer. Importantly, kits include blind cord cleats. I commend the work of Gordon Banks MP and my colleague Keith Brown in raising awareness about the dangers of blind cords. In my own family, we have taken action to ensure that our wee one does not run the risk of the dangers of blind cords without cleats. We must ensure that the legacy of the tragedy to which Dr Simpson referred is that awareness is raised and more lives are saved as a result of the actions that the Government takes.
People are safe not only because of the kits but because of the holistic approach that is taken by RoSPA and the local teams in providing a home safety risk assessment and home safety awareness for parents and carers. That in itself is a remarkable achievement. I am aware that we cannot measure what has not happened and, in some ways, we will never know what the full impact of the kits has been, but common sense tells us that lives will have been saved and injuries prevented. As someone has said, there are no randomised control trials to tell people that wearing a parachute when they jump out of an aeroplane is a good thing to do.
The quotes from the parents that have been included in the evaluation report illustrate how much parents have welcomed the scheme. I return to the views of the parent whom Clare Adamson quoted:
“I had been stressing about getting safety gates and other equipment in my home for a while but could not afford it. I was overjoyed when I heard about this scheme. Thank you!”
On David Torrance’s point about people needing eyes in the back of their head when bringing up a wee one, we should not have a situation whereby social inequality and the lack of income prevents a person from making their homes as safe as it can be. We need to sharpen our focus across Government and make sure that our anti-poverty measures recognise the recommendations that are outlined in the RoSPA report.
Although we can count the number of kits fitted and the number of families visited, there are other successes from the scheme that cannot be counted or measured in a traditional way. Indeed, relationships have been built between professionals and families that will provide a springboard for further interaction; and links are made between different professional groups that did not know each other before but which all have a shared interest in making sure families are safe and healthy. Perhaps that is a signal that we need to involve staff groups beyond the obvious ones of health, social work and education in our GIRFEC training and approach to ensure that we truly get it right for every child.
Furthermore, the increased knowledge and confidence on the part of parents and carers will, in itself, contribute to children’s safety. There is also the increase in staff capacity to deliver the scheme in terms of knowledge, understanding and skills and, in some cases, gaining a recognised qualification.
We are delighted with the scheme’s success and we commend RoSPA for the initiative. I know that it has not all been plain sailing and that there have been a few challenges along the way. However, we can learn from the challenges. I know that the evaluation report makes some suggestions about how we can build on the legacy of the project and I urge community planning partnerships to study and consider those suggestions. Even in times of financial challenge, there is a need to move towards a prevention and early intervention agenda.
I again thank Clare Adamson for her sponsorship of the debate and commend RoSPA for its work on the scheme. I also thank all the other members who have contributed so fully in the time that they have during a members’ business debate to make sure that we have a shared agenda not only to make Scotland the best place to grow up in but to reverse the unfortunate trends that we have seen and move us towards being one of the safest places to grow up in.
13:04 Meeting suspended.