Prevention of home related injuries of pre-school children: safety measures taken by mothers.

Home related injuries are a major threat to the health of pre-school children in the Netherlands. Many risk situations can only be avoided through parental safety behaviour, especially with measures taken to structure the child's environment. This study was meant to contribute to the information needed to develop a safety education programme directed at parents. Therefore, we assessed mothers' safety measures related to poisoning, burns and falls, the consistency between these measures within one type of accident, and their relation to the mothers' education. A written questionnaire was completed by 1129 mothers of pre-school children (response rate 84%). Results suggest that many of the safety measures taken by mothers have to be judged moderately safe or unsafe and therefore correction or development of these measures is needed. Furthermore, this study suggests that safety measures belonging to one type of accident are not consistent with one another. This implies that each measure has to be advocated separately. Moreover, there was no substantial evidence for a relation between the mothers' safety measures and their education. Safety educators, therefore, do not need to differentiate between mothers with different educational levels when designing programmes.