Child Injury Prevention

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• What is Child Injury Prevention?
  • Definitions
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  • Ecological model
  • Social Determinants
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• The ChIPP Project
  • Planning
  • Implementing
  • Evaluating
• Community Action
  • Phase 1 - Look at the problem
  • Phase 2 - Think and plan
  • Phase 3 - Act and implement
  • Phase 4 - Relect and evaluate
  • Definitions
  • Injury data sources
  • What works
  • Goals, objectives and strategies
  • Who can help
• Contact us
• References

Planning ChIPP

Why plan?

The planning phase of the Child Injury Prevention Project (ChIPP) was important because it was an opportunity to:

• define the problem
  including scoping the incidence, severity, causes etc of child injury through analysis of available data including mortality (death), morbidity (hospitalisations) and Emergency Department presentations for Mackay and Mount Isa
• consult the existing evidence 
  through a literature review to examine what currently works and what doesn't work in child injury prevention. It is worth noting that this has been an ongoing process given that new evidence is always emerging.
• consult experts
  to seek opinions on how best to proceed. We asked experts to undertake a literature review and hence the literature review reflects their opinions. Additionally as part of the consultation process, we sought out local community experts.
• understand the context
  in which the Project was being developed through statewide and local consultation with an audit which included the following: 
    - Who were the key players?
    - What projects/programs currently existed?
    - What had been done before?
    - What worked?
    - What didn’t work and why?
  From this a line of sight was able to be established with the National Injury Prevention and Safety Promotion Plan 2004-2014, and a range of relevant and existing state programs were also identified such as SafeHome, Giddy Goanna and Smart Housing. Significantly, the WHO Safe Communities model  was already established in both communities and so it was proposed that the Project integrate within this existing local infrastructure.
• develop a program plan
  by involving all stakeholders and seek agreement on a general approach, the program structure, any risks and existing problems to be addressed and budgets. A Program Plan for ChIPP in each location was developed based on a model plan provided in the original scoping paper.

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• engage key stakeholders
  (both for the statewide inter-sectoral Reference Group and at a local level) initially through one on one liaison and group discussions. Given the recognition that no one agency can address child injury prevention alone, there is a need for shared responsibility based on partnerships. Local key stakeholders that were involved with ChIPP included:
    - Local Government
    - Hospital staff
    - Community Health staff
    - Local Ambulance staff
    - Local Fire and Rescue staff
    - Department of Communities
    - Office of Fair Trading
    - Kidsafe
    - Farmsafe
    - Divisions of General Practice
    - Childcare providers
    - Department of Housing
    - Queensland Police Services
    - Queensland Transport
    - Queensland Injury Surveillance Unit
    - Local Indigenous elders etc.

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• plan for evaluation
  through identification of key performance indicators and key evaluation questions based on the Project Goal of  "reducing injury associated morbidity and mortality in the 0-4 year age range in two rural or remote communities in Queensland over three to five years" by using the Objectives of:
    - Developing an inter-sectoral injury prevention strategy targeting physical and social environments that are associated with the most common causes of injury for Queensland children in rural and remote areas
    - Increasing the capacity of local Working groups to address local injury issues,
    - Implementing sustainable strategies,
    - Undertaking a trial of the injury prevention strategy in specific rural or remote communities to reduce the rural/urban differences,
    - Measuring the effect of the interventions and any background trends, and
    - Making recommendations to the ChIPP Reference Group for future implementation.
• plan for sustainability
  (of impacts and outcomes, not of the Project itself) from the outset through cultivating ownership and local investment in strategic passive strategies.

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Results

These action steps ensured:

• The identification of a series of recommended evidence based specific interventions to reduce child injury.
• Community engagement and organisational commitment through local ownership of data, injury problems and solutions.
• Integration with existing relevant child injury prevention strategies/programs.
• Identification of local key stakeholders including champions and advocates.
• That sustainability was considered from the beginning.

Moving forward

In order to progress from planning to implementation the following critical elements (some based on hindsight) were required:

• development of a comprehensive project plan that identified a clear, agreed and realistic goal, as well as defined how this goal was to be achieved highlighting roles and responsibilities, resources required etc.
• facilitation of a collaborative response led by a dedicated Project Officer within each community that was supported by a local working group of key stakeholders. This required a balance to be struck between reliance/dependence on the Project Officer and shared responsibility amongst local key stakeholders for the development, implementation and evaluation of Project strategies.
• development of a communication strategy via the Project Officers between the two project sites/communities to promote learning through sharing and also between each project site/community and the statewide inter-sectoral Reference Group and Project sponsors.

A timeline

A summary of the key events around the development of the ChIPP is available.

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