Meeting of the Parliament

Meeting date: Wednesday, June 5, 2019

Official Report 1086KB pdf

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Child Safety Week 2019

The final item of business is a members’ business debate on motion S5M-17050, in the name of Clare Adamson, on child safety week 2019. The debate will be concluded without any question being put.

Motion debated,

That the Parliament notes that Child Safety Week, the flagship annual campaign run by the Child Accident Prevention Trust (CAPT), takes place between 3 and 9 June 2019 with the theme, Family life today: where’s the risk?; understands that, after the neonatal period, accidents are the main cause of childhood death in Scotland, responsible for two out of five child deaths, and that, in 2018, some 7,260 children were admitted to hospital in an emergency after an accident with some experiencing life-changing injuries; appreciates CAPT highlighting the new dangers that face families today from the more complex aspects of modern life in which the very things that help make life more convenient can bring new risks, such as button batteries that can kill when swallowed, child appealing washing capsules that can poison or nappy sacks stored under cot mattresses that can suffocate babies; acknowledges the additional concern of the agencies involved that children living in Scotland’s most deprived communities are more likely to experience a preventable accident than those from the least deprived areas; applauds Child Safety Week’s online resources and activities, which are available free to families and agencies through support from the Scottish Government, and which are designed to raise awareness of both risks and preventative strategies; acknowledges Child Safety Week’s continuing promotion and support of collaborative approaches, and commends the efforts of all agencies that work together to seek to increase the safety of children and young people.

17:04  

I thank the members who have signed the child safety week motion and all those members who will take part in the debate.

Child safety week is the flagship annual campaign that is led by the Child Accident Prevention Trust, or CAPT, and this year it runs from 3 to 9 June. This year’s theme is “Family life today: where’s the risk?”

Accidents remain the main cause of death in Scotland for children and babies. Two out of five child deaths are from unintentional injury and 7,260 children were admitted to hospital last year following accidental injury, some of whom experienced life-changing injuries.

However, that is just the tip of the iceberg, because those were hospital admissions. The figures do not record presentations at accident and emergency departments from accidents that could have resulted in breaks to bones, burns or scalds or any of the lesser injuries that nonetheless are very traumatic for the young children who are involved.

I will highlight a change in circumstance since I last debated child safety here. The Scottish Government has committed to embedding the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child into Scots law and all aspects of Scottish life. That will be particularly important, because we know from the statistics that disadvantaged groups and those from SIMD—Scottish index of multiple deprivation—areas of deprivation are far more likely to be the victims of accidents and unintentional injury. Article 24 of the convention seeks

“To ensure that all segments of society, in particular parents and children, are informed, have access to education and are supported in the use of basic knowledge”

in a number of areas, including

“the prevention of accidents”.

I apologise to the minister in advance that I am likely to be bringing this issue to the chamber frequently over the coming years to ensure that accident prevention makes it to the top of the political agenda. That is very important, because we have a statutory duty for road safety in Scotland but there is not a statutory duty for safety in the home, for instance. Pressures on councils have led to many home safety positions being incorporated into other council roles, such as in trading standards. We must be very vigilant about that.

The partners who are involved in this year’s child safety week include the Scottish Government’s safer Scotland campaign, the “Think!” road safety information for road users, Bitrex, which has produced the bitterest substance ever discovered—I do not know whether the minister has yet taken a Bitrex test, but she will not have forgotten it if she has—and the Thomas Cook Children’s Charity, which is committed to improving lives and benefiting communities across the United Kingdom.

I will turn to some of the dangers for child safety. I recommend that people look at the Child Accident Prevention Trust’s Twitter feed and its website, which contain really useful information about potential dangers to young people and children and give good advice to parents about how to avoid unintentional injuries. Burns and scalds can result from the use of hair straighteners, which can cause a grab injury that could restrict the movement of a young child as they grow older, making a lifelong change to outcomes for that young person. We also have to be very vigilant about hot drinks and hot bath water.

One of the most frightening experiences for a parent is when breathing stops. Changes in the ways in which we live have brought new dangers for toddlers, of which blind cords are a particular example—a campaign about that has run for a number of years now. We have also seen recently the tragedy of babies and young children being suffocated by nappy sacks, and there is lots of advice about safe storage, away from cots and play areas, of those potential dangers for young people.

Poisoning is also a worry a for parents; in my day, we kept all the bleaches and chemicals in a cupboard and were told not to put them into bottles that looked like drinks. I remember those messages, but time and technology have moved on and we now have a risk from liquitabs, which are very common in households for use with dishwashers and laundry. Having taken cognisance of the work that the cross-party group on accident prevention and safety awareness and other organisations have done, a lot of manufacturers have moved away from prettier colours and stronger scents in order to make liquitabs less appealing to young children. That is to be welcomed.

Button batteries have become common in many electrical items that we buy. A lot of them are in toys that are presented for use by children and toddlers. They pose a particular hazard because they can be easily swallowed by a young child and can have a devastating—in some circumstances, fatal—impact. We must alert parents to those possible dangers.

Falls in and around the house, such as falls from cots and highchairs, can have a serious impact on young people. We should look to prevent those wherever possible.

Members might know that I have a particular interest in road safety. In my family, I have had a tragedy regarding road safety, which is what brought me to this area. I am not a practitioner in safety but, in the position that I have had as a councillor and now as an MSP, I feel that I should promote it.

I am not the only person who has taken that positive from a family tragedy. In Scotland, there has been a lot of work done on drowning. We now have a Scottish drowning prevention strategy that came from the work of the members of the cross-party group. I pay particular credit to the Spiers family in Glasgow. Duncan and Margaret lost their son when he was on a night out in Glasgow and drowned in the River Clyde. They have been campaigning tirelessly to have the signage along the Clyde walkways improved and to have ropes attached to the life preservers that are on the quayside. I pay tribute to any family who has become the face of a safety message. It means much more to the public because it adds a human aspect and puts a face to what can be seen as a dry and technical advice area. Families have come forward to show the effect of burns on their children. People have come forward to warn about how they have been affected by carbon monoxide poisoning. I pay tribute to the bravery of those families who are willing to come forward and try to prevent that from happening to anyone else.

Fire safety and carbon monoxide poisoning are two areas that we worry about for our families. There is now more frequent use of electrical equipment. Cheaper versions of equipment and chargers can pose a danger. I pay tribute to the work of Electrical Safety First in advising consumers on ethical purchasing and, along with the trading standards officers who work in that area, warning of those dangers.

Later this evening, I will convene the cross-party group on accident prevention and safety awareness. We now have more than 140 members, all of whom are dedicated to making our working and leisure lives as safe as possible. We have said that we want Scotland to be the best place in the world to grow up. That means that we want Scotland to be the safest place in the world to grow up. [Applause.]

I know why people in the public gallery want to clap, but applause is not permitted in the public area.

17:14  

I thank Clare Adamson, not just for securing this debate but for the huge amount of work that she does on safety issues. Being safe is about assessing risk and taking steps to minimise that risk. We can do that only through discussion and education, and I thank her for all that she does to facilitate that.

Family life has always been a changing situation. The other day, I was speaking to a constituent at a sports club, and it turned out that he had been a fireman in the 1970s in Clydebank. In the 1970s, before we moved to Aberdeenshire, my mother and father had their three small children in a flat in Faifley—or “the Faifley”, as it is known. I was recalling the day that we had a chip pan fire and joking with him that he had perhaps attended, and he said: “I think every Clydebank family in the 1970s had a chip pan fire at one time or another. I’ll have been to thousands.” That high risk has largely gone. We do not use open chip pans any more, electrical safety has improved and the home is an altogether safer place. However, as technology improves, old dangers are replaced with new ones. Helping children to understand what to do to avoid harm and to deal with accidents and emergencies can never start too young.

I commend the work done in schools in my constituency by the dinky doctors. I had a wonderful morning with the nursery children at Mintlaw primary school who were treated to a fun, interactive hour during which they learned how to call for an ambulance and what to do if, for example, they got burned or a member of their family needed help. The dinky doctors embed accident prevention and response into short sessions for children right up to primary 7 that are age appropriate every step of the way. For the nursery kids, teddy was the patient and the kids would know what to do if teddy fell and was not answering. In the later stages of school, the dinky doctors teach more complex things to young people, such as cardiopulmonary resuscitation and other emergency response methods.

Avoidance of accidents in the home environment is the key to a child’s safety, but many accidents still happen in the home. As wood burning stoves and open fires become more fashionable, the dangers that we thought we had eradicated with the affordability of central heating, by having radiators instead of open fires, are coming back. As fashions change and hair straighteners with high-temperature ceramic plates are used every day in the home, we increase the chance of really severe burns.

I thank the Child Accident Prevention Trust for the excellent action pack that it has developed, which looks at ways to prevent accidents in the modern home. I will put a link to it on my social media as it is exactly the sort of resource that will help families, community groups and organisations to make meaningful safety changes in homes across the country to keep the people who are most precious to us safe from harm.

What of the future? We have a climate emergency and families will be encouraged to leave their cars at home as they do the school run. That is only right and I welcome it, but it means that our streets will have to get safer. Provision of safe routes to school is built into the requirements on every local authority. Colleagues will know that I am a cyclist—a nervous one—and I also want safe cycle routes to school to be a requirement as we tackle the twin challenges of childhood obesity and climate change.

Children should have the right to cycle on a path that is free from cars, and parents should have the peace of mind to allow their children the freedom to get to school under their own steam, on foot or by bike. Right now, for too many children, cycling to school is far too dangerous. We know that a quarter of all cyclist deaths are children. We need infrastructure change to start now. Other European Union countries have made a conscious decision to change their streets to encourage cycling and prevent accidents. Lives are being saved, health and wellbeing are being improved and families have peace of mind.

We can do what we can through education to make our homes safer, but safety on our streets needs decisive action to give children the right of a safe cycle route.

17:18  

I thank Clare Adamson for bringing this members’ business debate on child safety week to the chamber. As we have heard, child safety week runs from 3 to 9 June, thanks to charities such as the Child Accident Prevention Trust who work tirelessly in their efforts to raise awareness of the risks of child accidents and, more importantly, how they can be prevented.

The theme for this year’s child safety week is “Family life today: where’s the risk?”, and the aim is to highlight the dangers facing families today from our modem and sometimes complex lifestyles. I have visited numerous nurseries in my capacity as party spokesperson for children and young people. Although the visits have not been directly about child safety, the stringent rules that nurseries have in place and the standards to which they operate in order to prevent accidents are always very evident.

I am sure that I am not alone when I say that children should be free to lead active healthy lives and should be given every encouragement to experiment, play and take risks. Odd bumps and scrapes are all part of growing up. They are how we learn about the world around us and, as parents, we accept that. But there is a balance to be struck. Sadly, accidents involving children continue to devastate lives, with under-fives particularly at risk. On average, half of the under-fives who attend accident and emergency every year do so following an accident that could have been prevented. However, it does not have to be like that. By getting down to our kids’ level and seeing the world through their eyes, we can spot dangers and help to keep them safe.

Sadly, many neighbourhoods have seen the demise of the school crossing patrol, meaning that fewer primary school children are receiving pedestrian training. I firmly believe that road safety awareness is a crucial life-saving skill and that all children should have pedestrian training. However, education is, of course, just one aspect of road safety. As parents, we have a vital role in teaching our children the skills that they need to stay safe.

As I mentioned, family life today is far more complex than it was in the past. It is certainly more complex than it was even 10 years ago, and it is often the very things that make life more convenient that bring new risks and dangers. I include in that things such as dishwasher tablets and laundry capsules. They might sit innocently in a cupboard, but their eye-catching packaging turns them into something that appeals to a child’s curiosity. They are pretty to look at but potentially deadly in a child’s hands.

Probably one of today’s biggest distractions around the home and outside it is the use of mobile phones. I am sure that we are all familiar with the age-old saying, “You need eyes in the back of your head when you have young children.” The time that it takes to be distracted by reading a single text is enough time for a child to run out on to a busy road or street, to swallow a dishwasher tablet or worse.

The reality is that mobile phones are now part of everyday life, but aside from their distractions, they also come with a whole host of risks for our children. Roughly 35 per cent of children in the 10 to 11 age bracket own a mobile phone. Children today are growing up in a completely different world and they face problems that I never had to face when I was younger. People might think that their child will not be affected by sexting, for example, but the statistics strongly disagree. According to a UK survey on teenage mobile phone habits, six out of 10 UK youths have been asked to send a sexual image or video of themselves. Shockingly, 25 per cent of those who were asked had actually sent an explicit image and, even more shockingly, a third of them sent it to someone who they knew online but not in real life.

When I list all the dangers that our children are exposed to nowadays, in the home and outside it, I think that if my children were still young, I would never let them out of my sight. However, we have a duty to our children to let them be just that—children. We have a duty to let them explore, learn and laugh and to let them live.

17:23  

I thank Clare Adamson for bringing this important issue to the Parliament’s attention. The devastating impact that childhood accidents can have on children and their families and communities has already been highlighted. The fact that accidents are—as the motion tells us—the largest cause of childhood death in Scotland after the neonatal period should give us pause for reflection on whether we are doing all that we can to reduce such incidents.

The work of the Child Accident Prevention Trust is vital in supporting parents and families to understand and to navigate the risks of modern family life. Child safety week is a welcome opportunity to highlight the work that the trust and many other organisations are doing and, as colleagues have done, to highlight the resources, online and otherwise, that those organisations have created for access by parents and families.

Accidents can, of course, happen to any family in any home. Parenting is tough and difficult and is a risk in itself, whatever the family circumstances. We can all think of plenty of examples of tragedy striking the privileged or the celebrity, but that cannot hide the fact—to which Clare Adamson drew our attention—that childhood accidents and, by extension, preventable hospital admissions are socially patterned, in Scotland and elsewhere.

The most recent statistics show a difference of around 30 per cent between the most and least deprived areas on admissions to hospital as a result of unintentional injury in children. What is more, as with pretty much every illness, condition and reason for hospital admission, there is an exact gradient that shows that no matter where someone is on the SIMD ladder, they are less likely to be admitted for an unintentional injury than someone who lives in a more deprived area and more likely to be admitted than someone who lives in a less deprived area.

Therefore, the chances of suffering admission for an accident are significantly determined by a person’s socioeconomic status. The question is what can be done to reduce that disparity and the overall number of accidents that lead to injury and admission? How do we support more vulnerable families to minimise the risk to their children?

We know what works, to some extent. This week, the Institute for Fiscal Studies published evidence that sure start centres in England—family centres that are situated in the most disadvantaged areas and are designed to provide targeted early years care and learning for the whole family—have reduced the hospitalisation gap between children from the most deprived areas and children from the least deprived areas by as much as half. That is a significant reduction.

Such improvements in children’s health and wellbeing show what can be achieved if we address the wider issues of inequality and vulnerability in families. As we reflect on this evening’s debate and consider what can be done to promote greater safety for children, we should bear in mind the results from England and the evidence that addressing inequalities of income and wealth can make a difference.

17:27  

I thank Clare Adamson for her leadership in the Parliament on child safety and I commend the excellent work of the Child Accident Prevention Trust, about which I have heard in the cross-party group on accident prevention and safety awareness.

There is almost a week to go before the stage 1 debate on the Restricted Roads (20 mph Speed Limit) (Scotland) Bill, which I introduced, so I will comment on the importance of speed reduction in tackling child casualties in our communities.

As Clare Adamson said, there are many personal stories out there. Mine is that a primary school classmate was run over and killed while he was out playing on his bike. The incident did not happen outside the school; it happened in the residential streets where my friend lived, as is the case in four-fifths of the child casualties on our roads. My friend’s death had an unimaginable impact on his family and the wider community.

The first person to be killed in a motor accident was killed in 1896. At the time, the coroner wrote in his report that such a thing would never happen again. It is unfortunate that, more than 100 years on, there have been more than half a million deaths through road accidents in the UK alone.

Although things are getting better, it is important that we continue to take action. An important and central step in delivering safer streets is to get the speed limit right. It is about infrastructure, as Gillian Martin said, and it is about taking that first step of getting a safer speed limit, not just outside schools but where people actually live—where my friend was killed.

Government policy on the issue is good. A limit of 20mph is the norm and is backed by the World Health Organization, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development and the EU. The reality, however, is that whether you live on a street that has 20mph or 30mph limits is a postcode lottery. A child who lives in the Borders is likely to be growing up on a 30mph road; in Fife or Edinburgh, it will be a 20mph road. Last week, the Rural Economy and Connectivity Committee published its stage 1 report, which recognises the benefits of a 20mph limit for road safety and promoting walking and cycling. However, the committee recommended that local councils could continue not to introduce 20mph limits, should they wish. I do not agree with that and believe that it will perpetuate the inconsistency that we already have in Scotland and that leaves some children more vulnerable than others.

I commend Sustrans, which does fantastic work on child safety. Unfortunately, it was not invited to give evidence to committee, but it came out with a report a couple of weeks ago that showed that traffic incidents are three times more likely to happen in deprived areas than in more affluent areas. That is a double injustice because deprived communities are often locked out of transport opportunities, yet the people who live in them face higher risks purely because of their postcode. We all know that a discretionary approach means that it will always be the more affluent, well-organised communities with community councils that will successfully lobby for 20mph zones, while deprived communities will be left behind.

The evidence that 20mph works is there. In Fife, we saw a 20 per cent reduction in accidents as a result of going completely to a 20mph limit and it was even higher—a 32 per cent reduction—in more deprived communities. It is time for our country to join Wales and London, and for Scotland to be declared a 20mph nation. It is time to ensure that the default speed limit in the streets where we live, work and play goes from 30mph to 20mph.

17:32  

I, too, congratulate Clare Adamson on the debate and echo Mark Ruskell’s comments that, for a number of years now, Ms Adamson has been leading the way in this Parliament in relation to safety and accident prevention. I hope that that continues to be the case.

In her speech, she mentioned poisoning and I noted in the Child Accident Prevention Trust’s information the emerging and growing risk of liquid nicotine refills for e-cigarettes:

“Hospitals are reporting growing numbers of children accidentally swallowing liquid nicotine from e-cigarette refills.”

That emerging risk needs to be borne in mind by individuals and families where those refills are to be found. They need to think very carefully about safe storage.

Clare Adamson also spoke about the cases that we refer to as the tip of the iceberg, because we see them measured in statistics. That chimes with a report from the journal, “The Archives of Disease in Childhood”. One of the co-authors was Dr Jamie Cooper, a consultant in emergency medicine at the Royal Aberdeen children’s hospital, who said:

“We only see the tip of the iceberg, we only see it when it is not alleviated.”

The article highlighted three cases from within Aberdeen alone of children choking after eating whole grapes. Unfortunately, a five-year-old boy choked while eating grapes at an after-school club and had a heart attack and died. A seventeen-month-old boy choked while eating grapes with his family at home and, although the grape was eventually removed by paramedics, sadly the little boy still died. In the third instance, a two-year-old choked while snacking on grapes in the park, suffered two seizures and spent five days in intensive care, but thankfully recovered. Those are only the cases in Aberdeen. The report—

Will the member take an intervention?

I will just finish the point. The report highlights that grapes are

“the third most common cause of food-related”

incidents. My researcher wondered what the other two were, so she looked them up; they are hot dogs and sweets. I still cut up grapes before I feed my children and the chances are that I will do so until they are teenagers and tell me to stop it.

The cross-party group on accident prevention and safety awareness was delighted to have a presentation, arranged through the Mark Scott leadership for life awards, from a group of schools in Cumbernauld that had taken inspiration from those stories and had developed a training programme. Pupils from those schools became trained in first aid and then went out and taught pupils in primary schools about the dangers of choking and passed on their expertise to those younger children. Does the member agree that first-aid awareness is important and that people should take advantage of opportunities to learn about it?

I will make up your time, Mr McDonald.

I am grateful for that, Presiding Officer.

I absolutely agree with the point that Clare Adamson makes, and I will return to it later, now that I have been given the time back.

Clare Adamson also mentioned drowning. Members from the north-east might remember the tragic incident in 2016 when my constituent Julie Walker died at Aberdeen beach while trying to save her six-year-old son, Lucas, who, sadly, also died. That incident led to the formation of the Aberdeen water safety group, bringing together various agencies in the city of Aberdeen to consider how water safety could be promoted not only at the beach, but also with regard to the two rivers and the open water in the city.

I will highlight another group in my constituency: Absafe does a huge amount of work to improve safety awareness in the city. It has an interactive facility in Bridge of Don called the safe, where its team and volunteers deliver engaging, fun and informative sessions that teach children about everyday hazards and how to deal with them. Issues that it covers include road, railway, home and fire safety, solvent misuse, antisocial behaviour, cyber-bullying and security. It is funded by Aberdeen City Council to ensure that every primary 7 child in the city receives a complimentary day visit, and its lessons follow the curriculum for excellence, ensuring that the delivery is age appropriate, supports required learning outcomes and fits the getting it right for every child principles.

Finally, Clare Adamson mentioned first aid, and I absolutely agree that first-aid training is important. It was great to see the announcement that all local authorities will deliver CPR training in schools, but CPR training will take you only so far in being able to save a life. For example, in a choking incident, wider first-aid training is necessary. I note that St Andrew’s First Aid has submitted a petition to the Public Petitions Committee calling for first-aid training in all primary schools. I recognise that the Government has said that that is better dealt with by individual local authorities. I hope that we might see some leadership from the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities and individual local authorities so that wider first-aid training can be made available to children and that they can be equipped not only to spot hazards but to deal with the situations that they might face with their peers.

17:37  

Like others, I share my appreciation that Clare Adamson has brought the topic of child safety week to the chamber. By doing so, Clare has provided us with the opportunity to highlight the impact that safety habits and accident prevention measures can have on families across Scotland.

It is important that we continue to discuss child safety, because there are new and unexpected hazards that people were not aware of previously—others have mentioned that, but it is worth repeating. We need to learn about those things and be aware of what can happen in our modern world. The Child Accident Prevention Trust, which instigated child safety week, says that more than 2,000 children are admitted to hospital as a result of accidents every week. We can work to reduce that number by prompting consideration of some of the new dangers and hazards that children face.

By their nature, accidents are an unpleasant surprise, and the Child Accident Prevention Trust is working to reduce that element of surprise by collating information about the causes of accidents. It provides tips to help parents consider unexpected hazards. With that information, it has created a free guide for educators, childcare practitioners and other professionals to help them start conversations with parents about how to prevent the unexpected. In other words, the trust has created free prompts for parents and practitioners to help them recognise hazards that they otherwise, and understandably, might not have been aware of.

What underpins the debate, and is also the context of and the motivator for child safety week, is the deeply sad reality that that information has not always been available to parents, with the result that many have lost children through accidents, which are the leading cause of death, serious injury and acquired disability for children and young people in the UK. That reality makes the discussion of child safety extremely important. Alongside the Child Accident Prevention Trust, parents, teachers, childcare practitioners and more, we are all motivated to start a Scotland-wide conversation about how we can minimise hazards and prevent accidents.

I fully support child safety week and have written to all schools and nurseries in my Glasgow Anniesland constituency to encourage teachers and play workers to use the free materials that are provided by the Child Accident Prevention Trust. The conversation needs to be inclusive—one in six parents have difficulty reading. It is therefore important that the action pack’s activities are used to engage parents. The issue needs to be on everyone’s radar, so that children across Scotland and from all backgrounds are safe. That can include practical demonstrations as well as leaflets.

The Child Accident Prevention Trust’s action pack outlines simple and practical information that covers hazards that can cause burns and scalds, or that can cause a child to stop breathing, as well poisoning, falls and drowning. It also contains tips on road and fire safety, and tells us that a baby’s skin is 15 times thinner than an adult’s, meaning that babies can be badly burnt by hot things much more easily than an adult can. It also tells us that young children do not have the reflex to pull away from something that is burning them; rather, that reflex is learned. The Trust points out the example hazard of a hot drink in the form of a cup of tea or coffee, which can scald a baby as long as 15 minutes after it has been made.

The free pack is available to download from the Child Accident Prevention Trust’s website and contains many helpful tips. It is easy to read and has activities that childcare practitioners can use to help to engage parents in the conversation. I encourage those who work with children and who are in contact with parents to use the Trust’s free materials, to participate in child safety week 2019 and to start conversations about how we can increase children’s safety.

I gently remind members to use full names in the chamber. There have been only a few slip-ups in this understandably perfectly friendly debate.

17:42  

I add my congratulations to Clare Adamson on bringing this topic to the chamber, and I commend the work that she continues to do in this important field.

We all know the phrase “accidents happen”. However, we are debating the fact that there are many cases where they do not have to happen, and where simple precautions could be taken to make places safer for our children. As parents will tell us, planning ahead and trying to see accidents before they happen are things that they do intuitively.

A young child sees the world differently from an adult: literally, because they are smaller than us; and figuratively, because they might see a sweetie where we see a washing liquid capsule. Later in my speech, I will focus on the point that children—particularly young children—who do not understand the dangers rely on their parents and other adults to take responsibility and reduce risks.

Collaborative working is important not only among organisations that run campaigns such as child safety week, but between parents and families, whether that is new parents getting the opportunity to share their experiences with other new parents, new grandparents sharing their memories and knowledge, or older children being encouraged to think about hazards and how they can protect their younger siblings at home. Speaking from experience, I will support anything that reduces the risk of my stepping barefoot on a piece of Lego.

Education plays a huge role, whether it is formal education and guidance from the Scottish Government and other agencies, or the anecdotal education that we gain from speaking to other people and learning from their experiences.

We have heard today about the dangers of modern lifestyles—about how there are more electronic devices that use smaller button-type batteries; colourful washing liquid capsules; and even things such as blind cords. Not all of those are new dangers—choking hazards and poisonous liquids are nothing new, and many of the same basic rules still apply.

It is not the case that we want to take a nanny-state approach. It is vital that we give children the space to learn awareness of their environment. Children will always hurt themselves at some point and, when they do, they learn how to avoid it happening again, and how to deal with it. We are talking about building up resilience. We have to be careful not to sanitise children’s environments too much so that they do not have the ability to learn.

It is important not only to eliminate hazards around children but to try to teach them why we are doing that, what the hazards are and what they could do. Teaching our children to be aware of hazards is just as important as keeping hazards away from them.

I go back to the idea that adults need to take responsibility and reduce the risks for their children. I had a couple of meetings last week, one of which was with Alcohol Focus Scotland. It had interviewed children of parents who have an alcohol problem. A phrase that the children used resonated with me. What they most wanted to happen was their parents not drinking while they were still up—they wanted their parents to take their alcohol once they had gone to bed. That resonates with us for many different reasons. I knew that this debate was coming up, and that resonated with me. We know that alcohol impairs our ability to focus on our environment. I am not talking about just the attention that is given to children; if our judgment is impaired—obviously, this counts for drug use, as well—by definition, the danger to children must increase.

Yesterday, I was down in Westminster with the Scottish Affairs Committee looking at the drug and alcohol problem in Scotland. There are more drug and alcohol use problems when there is deprivation, and there is a much bigger and wider issue that we need to discuss. Iain Gray has already mentioned that we need to focus our attention on that. We need to look at how we are dealing with the drug and alcohol issue. In turn, that will improve the safety of children’s environments.

I would love to talk about that in more depth, Presiding Officer, but I realise that my time is at an end, so I will leave it there.

I again thank Clare Adamson for lodging the motion.

You need to lodge a parliamentary motion for a members’ business debate, for example, if you want to expand on that, Mr Whittle. That would be worthy.

17:47  

I thank Clare Adamson for lodging a really important motion. Maintaining the safety of our children is of the utmost importance, and the Scottish Government remains committed to that—as it does to improving safety for everyone across Scotland.

It has been great to hear what members across the chamber have said about all the innovative work that is going on throughout Scotland to help children to recognise risks, and to help young people to spot hazards, risk assess and respond to accidents. That work goes on from nurseries to schools and community groups, and it has been a pleasure to hear about it.

The work that Ms Adamson leads through the cross-party working group on accident prevention and safety continues to address important issues and contributes to keeping us safe. That work crosses many of our national outcomes and ambitions. We have heard a whole variety of different angles in the chamber, which shows us how cross-cutting the issue is. Those national outcomes and ambitions include the safety of particular population groups, including children and older people; how we move about our communities on foot and by transport; and the key messages on staying safe in our homes. I commend the cross-party group for its endeavours on that, and the range of partners involved, including the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service, the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents, the Scottish community safety network, COSLA, the Scottish public health network, the Scottish Business Resilience Centre and, of course, the Child Accident Prevention Trust. The Scottish Government is once again delighted to support national child safety week in Scotland this week.

The key to success in the area lies in working together to raise awareness of risks and to progress actions and initiatives that help to reduce incidents. It is important to work with our communities to better understand the issues and identify solutions.

As we have heard, it is clear from the statistics that, sadly, unintentional harm remains a major cause of death and injury among children. The under-fives are disproportionately affected by unintentional harm, and it is one of the leading causes of death in children under the age of 15 in Scotland. Although we want children to lead active, healthy lives, we need to equip parents with the tools and information that will enable them to do so safely. The tragic impact on parents of losing a child or of dealing with a child with life-changing injuries cannot be underestimated. I know that everyone in the chamber agrees that one life lost is one too many.

Although it is clear that work still needs to be done to reduce those figures, we know that the number of children who are admitted to hospital as a result of unintentional injuries has fallen steadily over the past decade, from 8,353 in 2008-09 to 7,259 in 2017-18. The number of child deaths due to unintentional injury has also fallen from a peak of 147 in the mid-1980s, when I was a youngster, to 16 in 2017. That is a dramatic shift.

The need to keep up the momentum links directly to the importance of child safety week. Since 2008, the Scottish Government has supported the Child Accident Prevention Trust in running this special week, which helps to increase awareness and informs parents about accident risks to children and the simple steps that can be taken to avoid such accidents.

Earlier today, the Minister for Community Safety, Ash Denham, visited Smilechildcare pre-school centre, where she met childcare providers, parents and carers. The event focused primarily on burns, scalds and poisonings, and I understand that everyone involved, including families and practitioners, agreed that it was useful and informative. I spent this morning in Clober nursery in Milngavie, which has an incredibly innovative set-up. The nursery was doing a lot of outdoor work involving science, technology, engineering and maths, and the children were sawing and working with hammers and nails. Incredible work was going on, but a lot of work had gone into risk assessing the activities to ensure that the children could safely explore where their curiosity took them.

As Clare Adamson highlighted, this year’s child safety week, which is themed “Family life today: where’s the risk?”, is dedicated to raising awareness about the risks of everyday household items that have become a convenient part of modern living. We know that the under-fives suffer most injuries at home, and this year’s campaign highlights how, due to modern technology and other advances, home safety is much more complex than ever before, which makes it difficult for each new generation. Some of the same old hazards exist, but some hazards are brand new and did not exist previously. The distraction of mobile devices—I am as guilty as any parent of watching my phone when I should be watching my children—and the increased use of button batteries and brightly coloured detergent liquitabs pose new risks to children’s health and wellbeing that parents and carers might not have considered. It was great to hear Clare Adamson say that manufacturers are responding to some of the concerns that have arisen by taking account of risk mitigation in their designs, which is an important way of tackling the issue.

I am aware that, over the week, a range of local activities is taking place across the country. Work is going on with health visitors, community nursery nurses and Home-Start groups, among others, to raise awareness of key accident hazards together with practical prevention measures.

The minister has referred to accidents in Scotland more generally but, with respect to drowning accidents, does she agree that it is concerning that 59 per cent of Scotland’s councils do not have a water safety policy for coastal or inland waters?

I agree that that is concerning. I grew up in a small fishing village and represent the Highlands and Islands region, which has a vast and beautiful coastline. Nowadays, we are well aware of the risks of water, but accidents seem to keep occurring with devastating regularity. I am sure that drowning is preventable, so anything that we can do to tackle the risks should be done.

The Scottish Government is delighted to endorse the child safety week’s resource packs, which are available to community groups and services and which provide ideas and information on how to prevent accidents. I congratulate the Child Accident Prevention Trust on, once again, working so hard to raise awareness through this excellent week-long initiative.

Nationally, policies including GIRFEC, the baby box programme and the family nurse partnership all contribute to ensuring that our children lead healthy, happy and safe lives.

The Government continues to work with national and local partners to raise awareness of unintentional injuries and to improve outcomes for all vulnerable groups. That includes the work that we have done this year with the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents. That organisation has done a great deal of work as part of the building safer communities executive group on unintentional harm, which is chaired by the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service. The group engages a range of partners in recognition of the fact that this is a problem that we will solve if we work together.

On Friday, that partnership will host its second national learning event for local practitioners, with more than 100 delegates coming together to discuss and share local practice. The event will also see the launch of an unintentional harm and injury website for local practitioners to share evidence, guidance and best practice examples from across Scotland. That fantastic tool has been developed collectively, and it will be excellent to see it grow as a route to improving outcomes through learning from all the great work that is under way across Scotland and adapting it to meet local need.

Once again, I thank Clare Adamson for bringing this important issue to the chamber, and I again commend the Child Accident Prevention Trust and ROSPA for their truly excellent and continued work to support child safety across Scotland.

Meeting closed at 17:55.