Safekids Aotearoa (Starship Digital and Community Engagement) is the injury prevention service of Starship Children’s Health and a member of Safe Kids Worldwide. Our mission is to reduce the incidence and severity of unintentional injuries (accidents) to New Zealand children aged 0 - 14 years.
Why we’re here:
Child fatality data shows that unintentional injury is the leading cause of death for children aged 1 to 14 years of age. Hospital admission data shows that it is also the leading cause of unintentional injury hospitalisation for children aged 5 to 14 years. Every day an average classroom full of children (around 30) are injured severely enough to be admitted to hospital.
What we do:
Safekids Aotearoa designs and implements targeted information and training programmes in collaboration with communities, agencies and corporate partners across New Zealand. Programmes cover the leading child injury causes with the exception of Sudden Unexplained Death of an Infant (SUDI).
How we work:
Safekids Aotearoa provides practical advice based on international research, local knowledge and mātauranga, to help keep children safe from serious injuries like falls, drowning and incidents on the road. We utilise evidence-based research and national and local child injury data alongside programme evaluation insights to develop and implement unintentional child injury initiatives. We work closely with clinicians to gather insights on emerging child injury trends and to understand the impact of injuries at the emergency department door and beyond.
Safekids Aotearoa has close relationships with around 300 organisations nationally who work with whānau in the community and in their homes. We share injury prevention knowledge and resources to empower and equip these providers to help whānau make changes that keep their children safe. Nearly all of these organisations work directly with Māori and Pacific People's whānau.
Our Māori team members maintain broad relationships with iwi, hapu and whānau that have enabled us to gather and share mātauranga Māori on child and whānau safety and traditional parenting. We have a growing network of Māori professionals to support this mahi. This includes Māori editors, academics, evaluators, videographers, translators, composers, narrators and photographers. Our work is closely watched and supported by DHB Māori leadership and kaumātua and kaimahi with a growing interest in child injury prevention.
You can download our safety resources from our website.
More Information:
You can keep up to date with new research and publications by subscribing to our regular e-bulletins, SafetyLit and Tūmatakahuki.
- Safety Lit: Register here
- Tūmatakahuki: Register here
See our social media channels for more information:
- https://www.facebook.com/SafekidsAotearoa/
- Join our injury prevention community group, Pokapū Haumaru: https://www.facebook.com/groups/671052973362991/
- https://www.instagram.com/safekidsaotearoa/
Website:
Find out more about our programmes, activities, resources and services on our website at www.starship.org.nz/safekids-injury-prevention
Home Safety app Whare Kahikā
Whare Kahikā is a checklist that allows you to check, room by room, that your home is safe for tamariki. It has been developed by Safekids Aotearoa with support from ACC.
The app store and web version links are:
IOS: https://apps.apple.com/app/id1535419638
Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=nz.org.starshipsafekids.homesafetychecklist