Bid to reduce the number of injuries among children in Australia

The University of Ballarat, Australia and WorkSafe K.I.D.S. have joined forces in a bid to reduce the number of injuries among children in Australia by improving child safety education in schools.

The University and WorkSafe K.I.D.S. are developing a joint research proposal titled Safe and Sound: Developing Risk Intelligence in School-aged Children.

The new research proposal aims to identify children's perceptions of safety and risk, and their own roles and responsibilities in minimising risk and injury.

The main focus of the project is to educate children about risk management and safe behaviours. It will build on the existing partnership between the University of Ballarat and WorkSafe K.I.D.S. in improving the safety of the school environment.

University of Ballarat Vice-Chancellor Professor Kerry Cox said the project would also encourage and develop long-term strategic alliances between post-secondary education institutions and industry in order to apply advanced knowledge to problems, and to provide opportunities to obtain national economic or social benefits.

The University's School of Education and the School of Human Movement and Sports Sciences developed the research proposal.

Lecturer in Education Dr Janette Ryan said that the project would be amongst the first in the world to try to change the way that children recognised risk and danger and developed knowledge about how to make safe decisions. She said that the project would also seek to establish:

• The effectiveness of current programs and strategies that aim to develop children's own responsibility for their safety and risk-taking behaviours compared with conventional approaches to child safety education;
• The potential for child-centred safety and risk management programs for changing children's safety attitudes, behaviours and injury rates, and;
• A cognitive model for developing 'risk intelligence' in children through an awareness of risk management and safe behaviours that would prepare and sustain children throughout their life from childhood, teens and adulthood to manage risk - a whole of life safety education process.

WorkSafe K.I.D.S. CEO Susie O'Neill said schools, especially at primary school level, were the second most common place of injury to children.

"School children are injured not necessarily because the environment in which they play is unsafe but because a large number of children occupy the same amount of poorly designed space," Ms O'Neill said

"Schools will often remove playgrounds because they believe them to be unsafe instead of adapting the equipment and method of play to suit the environment. The school can create additional problems by taking away the activity that provides the opportunity to allow children to develop risk management skills.

"This project aims to reduce the number of accidents at school by preventing incidents that should not occur and thus relieve some pressure from the teacher by making the school environment safer for children.

"Future recommendations to increase children's safety will be based on studying the children's behaviour in these areas and determining how incidents occur. The safety of equipment, playing surface, activity, environment and the number of children confined to a certain area will need to be taken into account."