Helping Children's Centres to Enhance Home Safety

Many children have accidents, some are very serious and they are a major cause of death in children aged 1-4 years. Many accidents are preventable This study aims to find out the best way to help Children's Centres to provide home safety information about preventing fires to parents and carers of young children.

36 Children's Centres in four study centres, Nottingham, Bristol, Norwich and Newcastle will be recruited to the study. 30 families will be recruited from each Children's Centre. Children's Centres serving the most deprived populations will be eligible to take part.

Families will be eligible to take part if they have attended a participating Children's Centre in the previous three months, have parents who are 16 years or older, have a child under three years old and live within the catchment area of that Children's Centre. When 30 families have been recruited that Centre will be allocated, at random, to one of three groups. Children's Centres in group one will be provided with guidance about preventing fire-related injuries (an Injury Prevention Briefing (IPB))and help and support to implement the IPB, the second group will be sent the IPB and the third group will not be provided with the IPB ('usual care'). Children's Centres will devise their own programmes of safety advice for parents based on the IPB.

At recruitment and 12 months later, families and Children's Centres will complete questionnaires about fire safety practices. Children's Centres will also complete a paper-based tool about the implementation process at 12 months. Information about barriers and facilitators to implementing the IPB will be collected through interviews with Children's Centre staff.

The study will run from May 2011 to March 2014.