Let The Brain Do Its Job!

Stage 2 – Essay

Child Safety At Home – What To Be Done?

Talking about home injuries, do we really aware about it? Home injuries or accidents commonly affect children. There are statistics in UK shows that over 1 million children and teenagers are involved in home accidents every year, which they required hospital treatment. The age group for kids which are most at risk from home accident are between 0 to 4 years old. It means this case might happen to kids since they were born. There are 3 main age groups of people involved in home injuries. The first group is between 0 to 18 years old which indicates 51.7%, the next group shows 22.5% which is between 19 to 50 years old, and the last group is on the age of 51 and above which indicates 25.8%. Pre-school children are most vulnerable in the home environment partly due to unsafe home conditions and also because the children spend most of their time at home. This is related to their ability to crawl, walk, and climb towards danger and their natural tendency to put things into their mouth.

There are a lot of examples of home injuries or also known as home accidents. Fires, falls, poisonings, drowning, cutting or piercing, electrocution, choking and suffocation from foreign body are some examples. All these cases happen commonly in the bathroom, stairs, living room, hall and also in the kitchen. One of the greatest risks to child safety are house fire. Children playing with matches and lighters frequently start house fire. Many children died because of falls each year, some fell from windows or balconies and the others mainly from stairs. There are thousands of cases of children poisoned themselves by taking medications that do not belong to them. Children think that pills are candy, or they decide to use the caplets as part of a game. There are some cases involving the other poisonous products such as poisons for insects or rats and washing detergents; and sadly, the majority of these accidental poisonings happen at home. Most people simply do not know enough to protect themselves and their children from poisons that can lead to illness, brain damage, and even death.

Drowning commonly occurs in bathtubs or falling into a bucket of water, drain, wells and pools of water. Playing with the sharp objects such as knife, fork, and others can causes cuts. There is a possibility that children can injured due to the sharp edges of certain furniture such as table, chairs or a wardrobe. Every year in the U.S., many kids are killed or injured from contact with electricity. It is not only power lines that can kill or injure kids if they contact them, but kids can also be killed by shock from an electrical appliance or power cord in their home. In case of choking, children can swallow, inhale or choke on items such as small toys, marbles, peanuts or any other food items.

On the other hand, there are 4 main body parts involved in home injuries among kids. The most highest percentage is 31.2% which occur on the lower parts of the body. The lower body parts includes legs, feet, and others. For the upper parts of the body, it indicates 27.4% that includes stomach, chest, arms, hands and others. Head is also a quite common body parts that can involves in the accident which indicates 27%. Last but not least, there is also a minor case that involving the back body part of the kids. The percentage is only 3.7%.

In conclusion, injuries are not inevitable, they can be prevented. In home injuries, we need to act with others since it is a problem that involves many of us. Home injuries are preventable through several ways such as health promotion activities or home safety campaign. Besides that, most accidents involving children can be prevented by increasing awareness of child safety in the home, improvement of the home environment and better product safety. The most important thing, children should be supervised at all times. We can learn, contribute, lead and collaborate and the benefits are great for the nation, the family and individuals.

Stage 4 – Solutions

We have picked the best 5 solutions for this problem. Those top 5 solutions are:

1. Device
- This useful device called Portable Fear Device (PFD) which can assist parents to be alert about their child safety.
- Its Advantages:
· Assist parents to be more alert of their child safety.
· Can prevent children’s injuries at home.
· Can train kids from the beginning that whenever there’s a device, that is a dangerous place.
· Easier for parents to monitor their children.
· Costs less than campaigns, law enforcements, and rewards.
· Can be the substitute to all other child safety devices.
· A convenient device that can be used at any dangerous spot areas.
· The rubber coated avoid injuries and avoid the device from easily broken if it falls.
· The bumpy edges of the coated rubber would make kids disguss to touch.
· The device can be placed anywhere as it is so convenience that people can use it anywhere they like.
· The device can also help people to prevent crimes such as robbery and broken into house.
· Besides that, it can also help save pets around the house from getting near the dangerous spots.

2. Parents Responsibilities
- Parents should play their role by taking their action seriously in the child safety matter.
- Should know what is good & bad for their child e.g: buying toys, buying and placing their furniture, buying a suitable household, install the safety features in their house as the precaution etc.
- Parents are human being too. They are busy with their works and home. They can be careless/less focus on certain things instead of their children. Therefore, they need something to assist them to alert them if their kids are in danger.

Referring to the International Journal of Law and the Family 6,
( 1992) 52-71 by Michael D. A Freeman;
It says that::
- Parents should know their kids have rights and the are important as the children are to be treated with equality & as autonomous beings.
- Children’s are parents property. They complete a family rather as the standard consumer durables furnish a household( Kellmer-Pringle 1980)
- Parents should maximize welfare for their children because children do not seem to have counted or to have carried much weight.
- Parents should do a recognition and protection on their children.

- Parents should be alert on their children e.g:
· What they are doing?
· Where they are going?
· What and where are they playing?
· Etc.

- Their responsible at home are:
- put the poisonous thing at the right place.e.g: medication, washing detergent, pesticide.
- place the rubber mat in the bathroom.e.g: to avoid the slippery floor.
- close a bathroom door so that the childrean wont go inside & get drown.
- put the sharp/dangerous things that is unreachable for kids.
- put the electrical appliances at the right place.
- hire a responsible/trained person to take care of their children when they are not at home.
- should make a room just for their children to play.
- make sure their children are sleeping in the safe place right before they go to sleep.
- need to be alert of everything that happen in the house.
e.g:make sure the iron is placed in a box or in the right place after finish using it, make sure they switch off the gas after finish cooking.
- should train and educate their kids from the start.
e.g: what are the things that they can/cannot play, what are the things that they can/cannot do.They should be strict when practicing it.
- Parents themselves should know and understand that thechildren is their properties and should take a good care of them well.

3. Awareness Campaigns
- Build one organization for child safety and have public volunteers to help spread the campaign.
- Do the advertisement campaign through TV ads, radio, poster and billboard, a segment or a forum to talk about this matter and through internet and website.
- The advertisement should be interesting so parents will attracted and aware as well as take note.
- The advert should show fear of child injury. If not, people are not aware and take things lightly.
- There should be one segment on TV to conduct a talk or courses for parents about child safety.
- Make a day or a week for child safety awareness. During that day, the campaign about child safety at home should be more stressed out.
- Conduct a meeting every once a week among parents to create awareness.
- Manufacturers of child’s toys should stated that their toys are suitable for what age range.
- If parents wanted to hire a nanny, the nanny is compulsory to attend child safety courses.
- The campaign should highlight the importance of the child safety at home.
- In the advertisement, the public should be revealed about the implication on how serious the injuries among children.

4. Law Enforcements
- Build an act on child safety at home & implement it fearcefully.

- Law enforcements on parents, house developers, state/ district councils and many more for those who did not follow @ abide to certain criterias in protecting people, especially children from home injuries.

- If the state or country’s act cannot resolve any cases, the universal human rights act should be allowed to interfere to overcome.

- For developers & state/ district councils, United Nations has issued a landmark Declaration on the Right to Development in 1986.
Establishing development as a basic Human Right & demanding that other human rights concerns be integrated with development programs.
It defines development as a human –centered process that should ideally enlarge the choices of individuals & communities while respecting of self-determination, equity and nondiscrimination.
To increase awareness of the human rights implications of development’s work.

- Law enforcement should also focus on the toy makers @ manufacturers. They should follow certain requirements on how should the toys been made and to whom those are intended for.

- Disadvantages:
Not enough proof/ evidence.
Bribery among the judges/ lawyers.
Too many protocols/ procedures.
It takes too much time to settle certain cases.
Many people do not realize about the law.

5. Rewards
- Rewards will be given for those who help kids in the emergency cases.

- Types of help:
a) Call police/ambulance/fire department
b) Volunteer to help the kids in the emergency cases
c) Built and manage an organization in the housing area to spread the safety campaign.

- Types of rewards:
a) Money
b) Medal – “Anugerah Hang Tuah”, given to somebody that save people.
c) Gift
d) Certificate
e) Recognition

- Disadvantages:
a) People maybe give their help just for rewards
b) Police/ambulance/fire department may receive many fake calls.
c) This situation may create crimes. They create a fake incidents and innocent kids maybe involve.
d) People may use this as their main focus of their life that would create bizarre superhero because of too obsessed with it.
e) If there are too many people do even small things, they are willing to fight with each other to take the rewards.

Finally, we were coming to the end of the trimester. On the last class this afternoon, we had our last presentation for the subject and also the last presentation for my studies, perhaps! Yup, I'll be going for an internship on the next trimester and will be graduating on August 2009. We'll be get back to that topic later, but now I want to tell about today's presentation.

The final presentation for Assignment 2 was held at the same venue with our class before. It went smoothly except the projector can't work well at first. But, my groupmate Arif managed to call the CITS to fix it. For me, our group have presented very well, but actually I am too nervous and sometimes lost my words during the presentation. Ohh, poor me! Still can't dealing with nervousness although in the final year. *sigh*

Both of the lecturers have gave their comments on some parts that was unsatisfied them especially on the final solution. But, nevermind. I believe that we learn by making mistakes. The more we make mistakes, the more we learn. Practice makes perfect. But, wait! Nobody is perfect right? So, why practice? Hahahaha! Just kidding. :P

Allright, move on to the serious part. Since this is the end of the subject, I want to take this opportunity to thank Mr. Radzi and Ms. Helena for their valuable thoughts, opinions, supports and cooperations. Both of you were listed as my favorite lecturers and I will remember both of you forever. Please pray for my success in studies and also when I start working soon. And not to forget, please give me an 'A' for this subject. Is it too direct? Hahaha! OK, end it here. See you soon. Bye.

Some pictures during our presentation:

(Credit to Fida for taking these pictures)