Child Safety Good Practice Guide: Good investments in unintentional child injury prevention and safety promotion – Canadian Edition

• Purpose of the Guide
• Defining 'good practice'
• Injury Prevention Practitioners
• Additional Case Studies
• Downloads

Purpose of the Guide

The Canadian Edition of the Child Safety Good Practice Guide provides the first seminal, comprehensive document in the country from which decision-makers, practitioners and legislators can base their work and recommendations. It is designed to enable Canadian injury prevention practitioners to examine Canadian strategy options for unintentional child injury, move away from what has ‘always been done’ and move toward good investments - strategies that are known to work or have the greatest probability of success.  

This document is based on the 2006 European Child Safety Good Practice Guide, which was launched by the European Child Safety Alliance (the Alliance) in order to provide guidance on proven, effective injury prevention strategies.  Safe Kids Canada formally partnered with the Alliance to bring the Guide to Canada.

Evidence-based good practices are provided in this guide for those considering uptake, transfer and implementation of specific strategies or interventions.  In particular, evidence "at-a-glance” tables include referenced evidence statements and transfer / implementation points on 11 child safety topics, and 17 case studies demonstrate ‘real world’ success in at least one Canadian context.

Defining ‘good practice’

For the purpose of this Guide ‘good practice’ is defined as:

• A prevention strategy that has been evaluated and found to be effective (either through a systematic review or at least one rigorous evaluation) OR
• A prevention strategy where rigorous evaluation is difficult but expert opinion supports the practice and data suggest it is an effective strategy (e.g., use of personal floatation devices (PFD) to prevent drowning) OR
• A prevention strategy where rigorous evaluation is difficult but expert opinion supports the practice and there is a clear link between the strategy and reduced risk but a less clear link between the strategy and reduced injuries (e.g., secure storage of poisonings) AND
• The strategy in question has been implemented in a real world setting so that the practicality of the intervention has also been examined.

The value of ‘good practice’ is realized when the best available research evidence is combined with the practical expertise of professionals in the ‘real world’. With so much to do to address the safety of Canadian children and limited time and resources, it is prudent to focus on good investments - those strategies that are most likely to reduce childhood unintentional injuries.

Injury Prevention Practitioners

In Canada in 2011, few people are employed with a mandate related only to injury prevention. We encourage you to consider yourself an injury prevention practitioner if you work or conduct research in the fields of health promotion, public health and safety, injury prevention, or if you facilitate activities that promote safety on a volunteer basis in your community.

Moreover, we recognize that good practice requires us to integrate our efforts among those working to create healthier and safer communities. If you work in the field of healthy living, substance abuse prevention, mental health, policing or social services to name a few, you do already make a meaningful contribution to the prevention of injuries. You are indeed, an injury prevention practitioner. This guide is intended for all of you.

The Canadian Edition builds on previous work by child safety researchers from around the globe and is a further step in supporting Canada in moving toward evidence-based good practice. It is acknowledged that knowing what worked in one setting may not be sufficient and the transfer and implementation points and Canadian case studies included in this Canadian Edition are provided to inform decision-making, accompanied by illustrations of good practice in action. It is hoped that this information will generate thoughts on why a strategy worked and provide some guidance for transfer to new settings. However, more work is needed to understand all of the factors that influence the success of a strategy when transferred from one setting to another.

Additional Case Studies

The Canadian Edition provides a sampling of case studies to illustrate implementation examples of good practice and lessons learned to assist those considering implementing the strategy in their own setting.

However, the reality is that many programs have not been examined with respect to their effectiveness and it is even less likely that they will have been evaluated using a rigorous research design that includes a comparison group and a look at behavioural and injury outcomes. As a result, many programs could not be included as case studies in this version, but it is anticipated that as more programs receive adequate evaluation additional examples can be added.

• We are pleased to offer additional Canadian case studies for consideration. (Coming Soon)
• The European case studies are also available.
• We also have examples of promising practices in Canada  that do not yet meet the full criteria to be included as a case study, but which have already been identified as potential case studies. (Coming Soon)

To identify an injury prevention or safety promotion initiative for a future case study, please send your recommendation to Safe Kids Canada .

Downloads 

Published: Fri, Apr 29, 2011