Summer holidays can be a fun-filled period of the year with many families planning long car trips and lots of activities to entertain the kids. During this time, it’s important parents provide active-adult supervision and keep distractions to a minimum to reduce and prevent injuries from occurring.
Each year in Western Australia 35,000 children will present to an emergency department; 8,000 children will be admitted to hospital from an injury and 24 children will die from an injury. Between 2020/21, over the holidays months of December and January, 3,268 children presented to Perth Children’s Hospital Emergency Department for an injury. The majority of injuries occurred to children under the age of five years old.
In July 2014 and June 2019, there were a total of 14,506 injury presentations to PCH ED during the Christmas period. Children between 0 and 4 years of age represent the majority (42.8%, n=6,206) of injury presentations over this period.
The most common injury that presented to PCH ED during this period was caused by a fall (36.5%, n=5,288). This was followed by blunt force (23.7%, n=3,376) and bites and stings (4.6%, n=673). Of all known locations recorded during the presentation, the home was the most common injury location (18.4%, n=2,669). With the data from PCH ED, we can break down the home even further and identify the outdoors as being the highest injury rate location (41.0%, n=536) followed by living/dining (22.8%, n=298) and bedroom (20.1%, n=262).
During this time, it’s important to be aware of common injuries that can happen to children in and around the home. Now is a great time to assess our surroundings and make sure we are using best practice safety measures to prevent the risk of injury around the home this Christmas holidays. Kidsafe WA’s Home Safety Checklist is a great resource to be used as it provides parents and carers with information to make sure your home is free from hazards that can be dangerous to children.
Our Home Safety Checklist is also available in Vietnamese, Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese, Korean and Arabic.
For more information on home safety and preventing injuries visit www.kidsafewa.com.au/home-safety/.
