Levi Looks at Home Safety

Based on an article in Safety education, Spring 2012

RoSPA in Scotland has benefitted from the employment of a young person thanks to funding from the Scottish Chamber of Commerce. Levi Begg came to the Edinburgh office with the primary objective of undertaking an SVQ level 3 in business and administration. Over the same period Levi was also able to devote time to working with the home safety team, under the guidance of Elizabeth Lumsden, community safety manager, to carry out some research into where young parents currently access home safety information and where they would like to see further advice available inspired by a previous report done by Zahida Begum for RoSPA in England.

The project, BSure2BSafe, consisted of a series of focus groups with young parents across Scotland. To equip herself with background information on the topic Levi completed some desktop research and attended home safety training workshops being delivered locally to health visitors by RoSPA's home safety officer, Jennifer Henderson.

Levi designed the focus groups to include a presentation on the types of accidents which young children have,. This was followed with a question and answer session to collection information on their experiences along with their opinions about the most accessible places for them to learn about keeping their children safe. Each participant received a 'goody bag' of home safety resources including blind cord cleats and a non-slip bath mat.

Many of the participants indicated they would turn to their friends and families for home safety advice and a lot of importance was placed on the value of young parents meeting at support groups and exchanging advice and information with other parents in a similar situation.

In light of the findings from the focus groups the following recommendations were suggested:

• The need for more support groups for young parents
• More home safety information available at easily accessible places such as doctors surgeries and supermarket checkouts
• Building on the Family Nurse Partnership to monitor the inclusion of home safety advice to young parents
• Further research on the needs of fathers (all of the participants were mothers)

The final report is available on the Scotland home safety information pages of RoSPA's website at www.rospa.com/homesafety/aroundtheuk/scotland.