NICE guidance
The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence has published new guidance aimed at reducing unintentional injuries to under -15s.
Unintentional injuries cause almost 400 deaths per year in the UK, and thousands more serious injuries. Emergency admissions due to childhood accidents cost the NHS over £140 million per year.
The NICE guidance aimed at tackling these problems has been welcomed by all those working to prevent unintentional injury to children.
The guidance sets out recommendations based on research and consultation with members of the accident prevention community. It comes in three parts:
- Strategies to reduce unintentional injuries to under-15s
- Recommendations regarding home safety equipment and equipment distribution schemes
- Recommendations regarding road design and modification
It is particularly aimed at helping children from disadvantaged backgrounds, who are far more likely to die in an accident than their more affluent peers.
Recommendations
The three pieces of guidance produce a number of recommendations on how to prevent unintentional injury to children. An important one for those working in child accident prevention is that all local areas should have a child and young person injury prevention co-ordinator.
Are you an injury prevention co-ordinator? Email info@makingthelink.net to tell us about your injury prevention work.
Tools for councillors
NICE has also produced two resources to help councillors implement the guidance.
'Key facts for local councillors' and 'Ten questions to ask if you are scrutinising local action on preventing unintentional injuries in u15s' are designed to help councillors make the case for investment in injury prevention and owrk with scrutiny committees.
These two resources along with the full NICE guidance for councillors are published on the NICE website at the links below.
Read the guidance
View the guidance on preventing unintentional injuries:
- Preventing unintentional injuries in the home
- Preventing unintentional road injuries
- Strategies to prevent unintentional injuries
Search Making the Link’s statistics and data sources tool
Have your say
Which elements of the NICE guidance do you think will be most helpful in preventing unintentional injuries to children? How are you planning on using the guidance in your work?
Email info@makingthelink.net to tell us about how you're using the NICE guidance.
Related CAPT news stories
The Child Accident Prevention Trust (CAPT) is the UK's leading charity working to reduce the number of children and young people killed, disabled or seriously injured in accidents.