Parental perceptions of unintentional injury risks to children

This paper focuses on a qualitative study of parents' perceptions of unintentional injury risks to their children, highlighting the fundamental difficulty of convincing parents that injuries are a serious threat to children's health and that they are preventable. It also explores the parent's role in prevention, the difficulties they face in keeping children safe and their perceptions of the best prevention strategies. The participants were nine parents with children under 15 years, from two disadvantaged, inner-city wards in the north west of England, where injury rates would typically be high. Semi-structured interviews were conducted and the data were analysed using a framework analysis. The findings indicate that although the majority of parents were able to identify potential risks to children within everyday situations, and offer alternative courses of action, it was significant that they did not feel that injuries were preventable, but rather an inevitable part of growing up. The participants identified information, free equipment schemes and home safety checks as potential tools in injury prevention. However, parental perceptions of the inevitability of injuries were a key barrier to prevention.