Child Injury prevention takes on new TACTICS to get the job done

Every year, unintentional injuries kill nearly 42 000 children and young people under the age of 20 in the WHO European Region. TACTICS - Tools to Address Childhood Trauma - is a large scale, multi-year initiative of the European Child Safety Alliance, funded by the European Commission, with the aim to provide better information, practical tools and resources to support adoption and implementation of evidence-based good practices in Europe. EPHA partners the project.

In order to make the lives of all children in Europe safer TACTICS will explore health inequalities as they relate to childhood injury and more specifically target capacity building efforts at the regional and local levels. The initiative, which runs from April 2011 through to March 2014, builds on the successful work of past EC funded projects such as the Child Safety Action Plan (CSAP) project (2004-2010).

Why is the TACTICS project important?

Addresses child injuries: the leading cause of child death, disability and inequalities in Europe; see also EPHA article on highlights from the recent 64th WHO World Assembly conclusions on child injury;

Supports children’s right to safety as agreed to by all Member States’ signed commitment to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child;

Examines intentional and unintentional child injuries nationally and sub-nationally;

Supports the development and implementation of Child Safety Action Plans for Member States;

Develops practical tools and resources to be used by Member States to support uptake of child safety policies based on evidenced good practice solutions.

Who is involved?

TACTICS is led by the European Child Safety Alliance (ECSA), an initiative of EuroSafe – the European Association for Injury Prevention and Promotion. The Alliance focuses on strategies aimed at bringing about reductions in injury related deaths and disability amongst children 0 -18 years of age in Europe. It works with a network of child injury expert partners and stakeholders from various disciplines involved in child injury prevention.

In addition, key partners across Europe support the work (e.g., WHO, HEAL, EPHA, Safe Communities, Healthy Cities) to ensure results are relevant and useful for immediate application at the national and sub-national levels.

TACTICS is supported by the European Commission and has the participation of partners from more than 30 European countries, including national and international experts in the areas of in the areas of child injury, inequities, health indicators, benchmarking and indexing, and regional health policy analysis from Maastricht University, Nordic School of Public Health and Swansea University.

The participating countries are:

Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, England, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Scotland, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden.

Who will benefit?

The direct target group for TACTICS is decision makers within and outside the health sector (e.g., EU, National and Regional level elected officials, government authorities, lead agencies for child health, public health, education, transport) who have responsibility for making policy decisions with respect to actions to reduce childhood trauma and injury, increase childhood safety and monitor progress in achieving these goals. Enhancing their capacity in terms of making informed decisions on the adoption of evidenced good practices and enhancing targeting and allocation of resources to address child injury should result in positive outcomes for the indirect target groups - children themselves, their families and the stakeholders working at the EU, national, regional and local levels to reduce child injuries.

Project Process

The project activities can be roughly divided into three interrelated approaches that together will assist countries in adopting, implementing and monitoring evidence-based good practices to reduce injuries and support national child safety action plans.

1. Activities to benchmark and monitor child injury and related actions:

Monitoring progress in child safety action through child safety report cards and profiles in 34 countries including all 27 EU Member States;

Developing and piloting an easy to use Child Safety Index and tool kit to allow sub-national regions and countries do a quick self-assessment of key issues and to monitor their progress.

2. Activities to support the uptake and implementation of what works in child injury prevention:

Developing case study examples of both successful and unsuccessful attempts to adopt and implement evidence-based child injury prevention actions at the national and sub-national levels, in order to identify key barriers and facilitators to guide Member States in their own efforts;

Developing in-depth case studies of how policy decisions regarding child safety are made and how prevention programmes are delivered in six sub-national regions in order to more effectively facilitate implementation of national Child Safety Action Plans and enhance uptake of evidence-based good practices to sub-national levels;

Developing audience specific tools which will address the three stages of childhood and which will support uptake of evidence-based injury prevention strategies.

3. Activities to explore the multi-sectoral and cross cutting nature of child injury:

Exploring the effect of health and social inequities on child injury rates and the effectiveness of injury prevention strategies in addressing inequities both within and between EU Member States;

Mapping responsibility for child injury prevention in the EU, and in participating countries and six sub-national regions in order to:

a) illustrate the complexity of the child injury issue and highlight the gains of a co-ordinated multi-sectoral response, and b) build decision makers’ understanding of the opportunities that a multi-sectoral response provides in terms of more effective use of scarce resources

Explore facilitators and barriers to multi-sectoral action at the at the national and sub-national (regional) levels, and communicate results in order to support development and/or implementation of national child safety action plans.

TACTICS Deliverables

Progress updates and deliverables will be posted on the European Child Safety Alliance website at www.childsafetyeurope.org during the course of the project as they become available. The specific deliverables of the project include:

Child Safety Report Cards & Profiles and European Summary Report Card on Child Safety in all 27 EU Member States (plus Croatia, Iceland, Israel and Norway). Report cards will for the first time include national policy actions related to intentional injury; see EPHA article on this issue here;

Report on child injuries and inequity in the European Union;

Child injury prevention good practice advocacy tools for three stages of childhood;

Child Safety Index Score and Toolkit;

Report on national case studies of key facilitators and barriers to implementation of child injury prevention;

Report on regional case studies from six countries examining facilitators and barriers to implementation of child injury prevention, including reference frameworks addressing regional management of child injury prevention;

Report on mapping responsibility for child injury in Europe (at EU, national and regional levels);

Progress report on Child Safety Action Plan development in all 27 EU Member States plus Croatia, Iceland, Israel and Norway;

Final public report on TACTICS project.

For more information on the TACTICS project, contact the Project Secretariat at:

European Child Safety Alliance

RoSPA House,

28 Calthorpe Road,Edgbaston,

Birmingham B15 1RP,

Phone + 44 121 248 2000

Fax +44 121 248 2001

www.childsafetyeurope.org

secretariat@childsafetyeurope.org