Peer educators--contributing to child accident prevention

Abstract

This paper describes the evaluation of an innovative approach to tackling the issue of childhood accident prevention in the home, in a deprived inner city and multi-ethnic community in the north of England. Three local mothers were recruited and trained to take on the role of peer educators. The evaluation design was informed by the theory of change approach that focuses on exploring how and why an initiative works. In order to achieve a diverse exploration of the situation, data was collected using individual and focus group interviews, visit summary forms and accident incidence proforma. The aim of this paper is to describe the qualitative findings and to highlight some of the successes and challenges of this approach in order to provide practice development messages.