Home safety grants available

Sharron Pardoe Reporter from The Hastings Mail

If you work with families and whanau to promote child safety in the home, you are invited to apply for the ACC and Safekids Aotearoa Make Your Home a Safety Zone Grant.

Make Your Home A Safety Zone Grant now open
If you work with families and whanau to promote child safety in the home, you are invited to apply for the ACC and Safekids Aotearoa Make Your Home a Safety Zone Grant.
The most common place for children to get hurt is in the home. Every year around 47 children are killed and 2,775 are hospitalised due to accidents in the home.

It is estimated that New Zealanders spend 70% of their lives indoors, which highlights the importance of addressing hazards in the home that can lead to injuries – some of which can be serious.

ACC and Safekids want to encourage organisations, services and community groups to promote child safety in the home, so they have set up the Make Your Home a Safety Zone Grant.

Adele Blackwood, ACC Injury Prevention Portfolio Manager for communities: “At ACC we see the impact of child injuries, and some of these injuries can have life-long effects on children and their whanau. That’s why this partnership with Safekids is extremely important, and we are pleased to be working together to help tamariki to be safer in their homes. This grant will provide opportunities for people to enhance the great work they are already doing with whanau.”

Mike Shepherd, Starship Child Health Director, Medical and Community: “We're very pleased and excited to see the launch of the Make Your Home A Safety Zone Grant in partnership with ACC. We hope to see many community action groups applying for these grants that will deliver life-saving safety devices and messages into New Zealand homes.”

“The Make Your Home A Safety Zone Grant is an opportunity to work together towards the common goal of a safer world for children. ln health promotion, collaboration is vital. By joining forces we can make New Zealand a better place for our children and grandchildren.”

Groups can apply for grants in two categories – home safety education for parents and caregivers with young children, or home safety education along with safety devices for installation in the family’s home.

Preference will be given to projects for Māori and Pacific communities, and those that can demonstrate they can reach a high number of families, to improve knowledge, attitudes and behaviour around keeping their tamariki safe in the home.

Applications close 27 October 2017. Successful applications will be notified directly and also posted on the Safekids website on 8 November 2017. For grant guidelines and to apply online visit www.safekids.nz...