New Petitions

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for giving us the opportunity to speak to our petition. As the convener said, I am chair of the home safety committee of the Scottish Accident Prevention Council, and Brian Topping is the vice-chair.I start with some hard facts. Every year in Scotland, as a result of an accident in the home, about 250 people die, about 17,600 people are admitted to hospital, and about 346,000 people seek medical attention. Nearly 1,000 people every day of every year seek medical attention after having an accident in the home, which is where people consider themselves to be at their safest. In addition to the pain and suffering that such accidents cause—not only to the victims, but to their families—there are other consequences. Businesses lose production due to accidents, many days at work are lost, there are direct and indirect financial losses to the victims and their families, and that does not include the massive burden that is placed on the national health service.The Scottish Accident Prevention Council, and other organisations such as the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents, think that those figures are unacceptably high and we are working hard on ways to reduce them. We think that it will help for home safety officers, with the necessary funding, to be employed by every local authority in Scotland, hence our petition. There are currently six full-time home safety officers in Scotland and a further seven part-time officers. Home safety officers alone will not change the world, but they can highlight to the public the dangers in the home environment. They can also liaise with other agencies and develop networks and multi-agency approaches to tackle the problem.The petition that is before the committee today has not come out of nowhere. A few years ago, the Scottish Accident Prevention Council canvassed the opinions of all local authorities, health boards, fire brigades and health councils on the subject of home safety. Of those who replied, 78 per cent supported our idea of making home safety officers a statutory function. Home safety affects everyone living in Scotland today. Statistics show that people are more likely to have a home accident if they live in an area of social deprivation. Home safety officers in each local authority area could identify the people thought to be most at risk and such officers could ensure that education, training and resources are targeted to raise awareness of the dangers to be found in the home and the steps that can be taken to reduce the risk.If 1,000 people per day were to seek medical attention due to any other single issue there would be an outcry, but because accidents happen in the privacy of the home the scandal is often ignored. In asking the committee to consider our petition, I hope that we take another step forward in reducing the scale of the problem.

There is a range of accidents. The worst are probably falls in the elderly, which can sometimes be avoided by simple interventions. If we do not know that people have problems and they do not know that they can seek help, the costs can be considerable, through pain and suffering or ending up in sheltered housing or in hospital with a broken hip. Simple interventions can prevent that.Under-fives are also a highly vulnerable group. Falls affect them, as do burns and scalds from water from bath taps, for example. Simple interventions can save lives.

Having a home safety officer who could perform a safety check of an elderly person's home and give a few home tips would improve that elderly person's situation.

I am not an accountant, so I have not worked out the figures, but we have just to consider the burden that 1,000 people a day attending, 250 people a year dying and 17,500 people a year being admitted to hospital must place on the national health service. If those accidents did not happen, the burden on the national health service would reduce.

We hope that the Scottish Executive would find the money in its resources to fund the proposal in the petition. As Jim Black, the chairman of our home safety committee, said, the national health service would save money. We would spend money to save much money and misery.

Funding could come from a range of places. If we reduced the number of accidents, we would reduce burdens on social work services, occupational therapy, the NHS, doctors and housing associations that need to make adaptations after accidents. If simple interventions can be made before the event, everyone will benefit.

No. I am a full-time home safety officer and the suggestions that I make are advisory. I am not telling people how to live; I am giving them advice about a safer way to live. It is up to them whether to take that advice. I could never see there being an enforcement issue; the officers would have an advisory role.

The implementation of the advice?

No. That would be taking things a step too far. People can live in their own homes as they wish. I am just giving them advice on how to do so more safely.

Yes. If we could reduce the number of such accidents, we would be saving children from a lifetime of misery and operations and the money that we would save the NHS could be put into other prevention initiatives.

Yes. I do not want to take up the rest of the day talking about what I do, but if I were working with an older person, for example, I would give them advice, refer them to Care and Repair Forum Scotland if they needed a small repair done, put them in touch with social services to see whether they were missing out on benefits that could help them buy a piece of safety equipment and contact a social worker or doctor if they needed one. If there was a gas or electricity problem, I would refer it to the relevant agency. Many older people—my dad is a perfect example of this—say, "I don't want to bother them", so I would take up the problem on their behalf.

Yes. If the problem was severe we could refer them to local authority grant schemes.

I have been working full time only since April.

Yes. We might go into a house and see a stair tread that is an accident waiting to happen. Under the small repairs scheme, which is run by Care and Repair, we can get someone to come round and tack it down. We do not know whether we have saved someone from breaking a hip, but we sleep a bit better at night knowing that we have done something to help them.

I have no idea. Although death rates have been falling, the number of people seeking medical attention has been rising significantly. There might be more accidents, but people are not dying from them.

It is difficult to measure that, because of the lack of useful statistics that we can gather. There could be a whole new petition on the gathering of statistical evidence. The full-time home safety officers have anecdotal evidence, but, unfortunately, there are no firm statistics to back it up.

You are probably aware of the home accident surveillance system and the leisure accident surveillance system. Sadly, the collection of those statistics has been stopped. Our committee has been pushing for the proper gathering of statistics throughout the health service. I am sure that MSPs would want to measure the success of anything that they were going to help fund. We support the fact that there are road safety officers, and that they have targets to reduce the number of accidents on the roads, but three times more accidents happen in the home than on the roads. That is why we feel that it is important that we reduce pain and suffering and that it is cost-effective to do so.

That is entirely true.

I see it as a role for the local authority. After all, it is partly responsible for the fire brigade and is involved in formulating, for example, health improvement plans with health boards, health councils and so on. It also has access to all the corporate bodies that might be involved and could even bring in other areas such as housing and social work. Moreover, it could liaise with other agencies and have a better chance of getting the job done.

I believe that the Government's policy is to ensure that health boards and local authorities interact. Interestingly, Tom McCabe, who was the key speaker at the Scottish accident prevention conference in Crieff, told us that he would like local authorities to explain to him why they did not have home safety officers. The answer is quite simple: it is a matter of money. Councils will quite rightly do what they have to do in education and so on. No matter whether the Executive provides all the funding or whether some of it comes from the health boards, we need a co-ordinated approach on this matter. I am sure that many ministers want to shorten hospital waiting lists and investing in this very worthwhile project could reduce the incidence of accidents and save a lot of money.

The Health and Safety Executive is really only interested in occupational health and safety.

I have certainly tried to do that. However, after discussions on the matter, it appears that the HSE is busy with occupational health and safety.