As a result of Phase 1, you now know a lot more about the problem/injury issue and what the community thinks. Time spent in planning and preparation is crucial to set the stage for effective and optimal implementation of child injury prevention. You will need to think and plan
Writing up your plan, including the above mentioned elements, is essential.
In order to inform what can be done, you will need to consider the evidence of what works and what doesn't work for child injury prevention in relation to the problem you have identified. This process of keeping up-to-date with the latest evidence does not occur once, but needs to be ongoing and systematic due to potential changes and additions to the evidence.
Additionally it will be useful to find out what is already happening in your community to address the problem. Undertaking a community stock-take will help you to:
To undertake a community stock-take, a variety of methods can be used such as:
Now that you know what is being done for child injury prevention in the community and by using the evidence of what works, you can identify what can be done, by developing goals, objectives and strategies. [39]
Your target group are those people that your project/program is focused on (eg. parents and carers). It is important to find out more about your target group such as how to reach them (eg. via magazine, newspaper or TV, use of role models etc).
Given the large number of causative and risk factors for child injury (as you identified in Phase 1 ), no one agency can reduce child injuries alone. Consequently, there is a need for a range of local people, groups and organisations to work in partnership. This partnership is often formalised into a working group/team or can be integrated into the role of existing and relevant teams.
It is important to identify all people/organisations (known as key stakeholders) that have a potential to help or who have a role to play in child injury prevention. It is also important to engage all local key stakeholders at the beginning of the project/program, including representatives of those who the problem is directly affecting. To ensure the ongoing support of key stakeholders in your project/ program you will need to actively maintain a good working relationship.
Key stakeholders can be involved in a project/program at a number of levels including networking, coordinating, cooperating and collaborating. [40] Particular roles that can be played by stakeholders include champion and advocate. Both these specialist roles can have a significant and positive impact on progressing child injury prevention.
Keeping the project/program and/or its desired outcomes going and growing (sustainability) needs to be planned from the outset.[14 ]
Some suggested steps to help improve sustainability include:
Evaluation is an important part of your project/program and needs to be planned for at the beginning and resources allocated towards this task. As a guide, evaluation generally costs approximately 10-20% of the total project/program budget. Evaluation will give you the evidence that your project/program is working, or otherwise indicate changes to the project/program.
In order to measure your project/program success you first need to establish a baseline, (which is the starting point before your project/program commenced) that you compare against with data collected at a later date. Baseline information will come from:
To further assist you with planning for evaluation it is necessary to develop clearly defined and measurable goals, objectives and strategies to assess your project/programs achievements and success. For information on measuring your achievements using the different types of evaluation refer to Phase 4 Reflect and Evaluate.
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