Councils urged to tackle preventable child deaths and injuries

A report by Public Health England says councils should take a number of steps to reduce unintentional injuries in and around the home – such as burns, falls or poisoning - among under-5s.

It calls on local authorities to provide greater leadership on the issue, make more use of existing services to prevent injuries, train the early years workforce to strengthen its role in reducing accidents in homes, and focus efforts on the five most common types of injury – suffocation, falls, poisoning, burns, and drowning.

An average of 62 children died each year between 2008 and 2012 as a result on unintentional injuries, while 450,000 children and young people attended an accident and emergency unit. Children from deprived backgrounds are significantly more likely to be admitted to hospital with unintentional injuries than wealthier peers.

The report suggests that the fact that the public health commissioning responsibilities for 0- to five-year-olds will transfer from NHS England to local authorities on 1 October 2015  - including the Healthy Child Programme, the commissioning of health visiting services, and Family Nurse Partnership services – represents a significant opportunity.

“The transfer marks the final part of the overall public health transfer and presents an opportunity for local authorities to transform services for under-fives including driving forward the more integrated, systems approach that is essential for reducing unintentional injuries,” the report states.

It also calls for local authorities to use existing programmes and services to drive down injuries – such as integrating home safety into professionals’ other visits.

“The key is mobilising these services and providing a strong lead to push injury prevention higher up the agenda of respective partners,” the report adds.

It recommends that health visitors should have appropriate training to enable them to identify home safety behaviours and offer advice, and states that children’s centres are well-placed to provide information and support to families around child accident prevention.

Meanwhile, local authorities should ensure that a senior manager is designated as a lead for child injury prevention – and a local strategy should be developed by an appropriate board, such as a health and wellbeing board.

The report also highlights a “persistent social gradient” for unintentional injuries, with children of parents who are long-term unemployed or who have never been employed, being 13 times more likely to die from an unintentional injury than children whose parents are employed in higher managerial and professional occupations.

Hospital admission rate for unintentional injuries among under-fives is 45 per cent higher for children from the most deprived areas compared with children from the least deprived.