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What is Kidsafe?
Kidsafe is the leading non-government, not-for-profit charitable organisation, dedicated to preventing unintentional childhood injuries and reducing the resulting deaths and disabilities associated with childhood accidents in children under the age of 15 years.
Kidsafe was first established in 1979 as the Child Accident Prevention Foundation of Australia. State divisions were established soon after. The name Kidsafe was adopted nationally in 1993. In July 2003, the foundation adopted a federated structure, with each of the state branches becoming independently incorporated associations. Kidsafe Australia's state branches are now:
- Kidsafe ACT (Inc)
- Kidsafe New South Wales (Inc)
- Kidsafe Hunter Valley Region
- Kidsafe Northern Territory (Inc)
- Kidsafe Queensland (Inc)
- Kidsafe South Australia (Inc)
- Kidsafe Tasmania (Inc)
- Kidsafe Victoria (Inc)
- Kidsafe Western Australia (inc)
Since the establishment of Kidsafe, the number of child deaths and hospitalisations has halved. Injuries are the leading cause of death in Australian children aged one to fourteen, accounting for nearly half of all deaths in this age group.
"More children die of injury than die of cancer,
asthma and infectious diseases combined."
Each year about 350 Australian children (aged 0-14 years) are killed and 60,000 hospitalised by unintentional injuries – the kind often referred to as accidents. Many of these are easily prevented by simple means.
Unintentional injuries account for about 90% of all injury related deaths in children and about 98% of all injury-related hospitalisations.
What is an injury?
Injury is defined as: Physical harm or damage to the body. It may be intentionally or unintentionally caused. An injury may be minor and require little or no care, or may be more serious, requiring treatment or hospitalisation and may result in permanent scarring, disability or death.
Our Mission
To make a safer world for kids by leading the promotion of action to highlight and to minimise the unacceptable level of risk and consequence of injury to children in our adult-focused world.
Our Values
- Concern for children as the basis of the welfare and growth of Australian society.
- A belief that prevention is better than cure
- The relevance of principles of cost-effectiveness, added value, quality assurance and the application of best practice
- A preference for the use of counter-measures based on sound evidence.
Our Aims
To prevent child deaths from unintentional injury and reduce the severity of unintentional injuries to children aged less than 15 years, through education, research, advocacy and environmental, legislative and behaviour change.
