Safe Child Penarth: experience with a Safe Community strategy for preventing injuries to children

Abstract

Objectives: To evaluate the process of establishing a Safe Community project for children.

Design: A descriptive study.

Setting: Penarth, a town (population 20,430) Vale of Glamorgan, South Wales.

Subjects: 3943 children and their families in Penarth.

Main outcome measures: Whether the 12 criteria for a Safe Community project (World Health Organisation) were met. Implementation of the safety agenda set by the community.

Results: Safe Child Penarth met 10 of the 12 criteria for the Safe Community network. All the items on the agenda were introduced in the initial two years of the project. There were difficulties, however, achieving sustained community ownership of the project.

Conclusions: The Safe Community concept stimulated work to improve child safety in Penarth. Community safety initiatives should involve all local agencies to identify the problems and work with the community to set and meet the safety agenda. Partnership with the local authority is valuable to improve the safety of the environment. The experience generated from Safe Child Penarth has been used to develop a county wide, all age community safety project.