Safe At Home - The National Home Safety Equipment Scheme

Safe at Home in Numbers

130 – Local authority areas participating in Safe At Home (out of the original 141 targeted)

66,127 – Families receiving home safety equipment

564,198 – Height Charts Distributed

11,653 – DVDs distributed and still reinforcing safety messages in Children's Centres and other locations today.

314,652 – Families receiving advice and information

1,530 – Children's centres participating

4,331 – Local staff trained

20 – Schemes providing equipment for over 1,000 families

4,692 – Number of families receiving equipment in largest scheme (Bradford)

What was Safe At Home?

The Safe At Home National Home Safety Equipment Scheme was a major initiative to help families keep their children safe from home accidents. The Scheme was managed by RoSPA on behalf of the Department for Education and delivered through local partners in over 130 areas of the country between 1 April 2009 and 31 March 2011.

The main focus of the national scheme was to provide home safety equipment to the most disadvantaged families in areas with the highest accident rates. This is because children from disadvantaged backgrounds are more likely to suffer accidental injuries or deaths. Children of parents who are long-term unemployed or who have never worked are 13 times more likely to die as a result of unintentional injury and 37 times more likely to die from exposure to smoke, fire or flames than children of parents in higher managerial or professional occupations. ¹

Over 66,000 families benefitted from receiving safety equipment through the scheme and over five times as many families received information and support that will help them to make their homes safer environments in which they and their children can live and grow.

The child safety video seen here highlights some key important safety messages, please take a moment to watch it. Further advice and information was provided through the distribution of over half a million Height Charts and a Flipchart Resource for use with family groups was also produced.

An independent evaluation of Safe At Home was carried out by the University of Nottingham and can be downloaded here along with the a copy of the Research Tools used.

Long-term analysis of the project can be viewed here.

Read our Safe At Home case studies to find out how the scheme affected real people. In addition to these case studies from Dudley, Sunderland and Wolverhampton you can read comments from families around the country.

Here you can also find some template forms used as part of Safe At Home which can be adapted for use in local schemes.

Sample Home Safety Equipment Forms

Referral & Eligibility Form
Equipment & Eligibility Form
Parents Form

References

1. Better Safe Than Sorry report: February 2007 - Audit Commission/Healthcare Commission.