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The Health Directorate have lead responsibility for coordinating responses on a range of issues related to unintentional childhood injury and has established a pilot, through Information Services Division (ISD), to look at data that is collected from accident and emergency departments (A&E) in order to establish the main causes of accidents, although other parts of government have a responsibility for taking forward specific strands of work, for example in relation to road accidents.

The pilot is expected to report back later this autumn. Once this information is available the Scottish Government will consider the data available and whether further work may be necessary in collating and analysing accident data before taking targeted action in order to reduce the number of unintentional injury (if appropriate).

The Scottish Government provides funding from the Health and Justice Directorates to support national child injury prevention and safety programmes, which promote the Scottish Government''s overarching objectives of keeping the people of Scotland healthier, safer, and stronger.

Data relating to patient age and the reason for attendance at accident and emergency (A&E) departments are not centrally available.

The number of hospital admissions, as a result of unintentional injury incurred in the home, for children aged 0-14, for year of discharge year ending 31 March, are shown in the following table:

Year	Number of Admissions
2005-06	3,573
2006-07	3,472
2007-08	3,148

Source: Information Services Division (ISD) Scotland. These statistics are based on data collected on discharges from non-obstetric and non-psychiatric hospitals (Scottish Morbidity Record 01, SMR01). Patient injury categories are identified in SMR01 by admission codes 32-35. Category 33 is used to describe injuries that occur in the home.

I refer the member to the answer to question S3W-24972 on 13 July 2009. All answers to written parliamentary questions are available on the Parliament''s website, the search facility for which can be found at http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/Apps2/Business/PQA/Default.aspx.

The Scottish Government provides funding from the Health and Justice Directorates to promote a range of child home safety initiatives, which underpins the Scottish Government''s overarching objectives of keeping the people of Scotland healthier, safer and stronger.

The Scottish Government is taking forward a number of cross-cutting policies to address the issue of child accident prevention. In December 2008, it published Good Places, Better Health: A New approach to the Environment and Health in Scotland. This project, stemming from the Strategic Framework for Environment and Health in Scotland, is a collaboration led by health interests and ranging over policy interests across the Scottish Government as well as external stakeholders with an interest in unintentional injury and accident prevention, particularly among children. This project has attracted attention within Scotland and in the wider EU.

Through this project, Scotland is being recognised as a country taking an innovative approach to national policy-making, connecting the environment to better health and well-being.

Other initiatives include Equally Well, which recognises the importance of children''s earliest years and how critical they are to their future development. The inequalities which are experienced by some parents and their lifestyles, including drug and alcohol use, can significantly harm their children. In order to give every child in Scotland the best possible chance of experiencing a long and happy life, the most vulnerable children and their families need to be given the support to improve their physical and mental health and their life prospects. Those most vulnerable children also need to be supported as they move into and through education to ensure that they are given an equal chance of progressing through school and onto further education.

Starting Well was the national health demonstration project for early years. Established in Glasgow in 2000, initially for a three-year period, as a flagship initiative flowing from the white paper Towards a Healthier Scotland, it aimed to act as a test bed for action and a learning resource for the rest of Scotland. Starting Well aimed to demonstrate that child health in Glasgow could be improved by a programme of activities that both supported families and provided them with access to enhanced community-based resources.

In 2003, Improving Health in Scotland: The Challenge signalled the Scottish Executive''s commitment to a second phase of Starting Well. Phase Two was launched in spring 2005 “ it ended its demonstration period at the end of March 2006. It has been independently evaluated and the learning is being shared across Scotland through NHS Health Scotland.

Through Road Safety Scotland, the Scottish Government is delivering a cohesive and coordinated suite of educational resources for children in Scottish schools, as well as road safety publicity campaigns and materials.

With respect to planning, on 15 June 2009 the Scottish Government published Scotland''s Road Safety Framework to 2020. The framework sets new targets for child road casualty reduction and details the commitments to deliver the framework over the next decade. The range of commitments include: scrutinising the circumstances of each child road fatality and reporting to Scottish ministers with recommendations for action; funding Road Safety Scotland to develop innovative road safety educational resources; undertaking an audit of our road safety education resources to ensure that they address the specific issues which Scotland''s child road casualty record presents; commissioning new research to investigate the links between road safety and disadvantaged children and those in ethnic minority groups; continuing to support the use of school travel plans, fully involving the local community, through grant funding to Sustrans School Run Team and cycle training resources from Road Safety Scotland and Cycling Scotland; and investigating reporting and implementing ways to enhance school children''s safety when getting on and off school buses.

The Concordat between Scottish Government and local government provides an opportunity for local authorities and partners to be given greater autonomy to deliver their services more effectively, including the health and wellbeing of children and young people.

Single Outcome Agreements (SOAs) have been forged between Scottish Government and each local authority. From 2009-10, all SOAs will cover the range of community planning partnership responsibilities.

The number of admissions to hospital for children under 15 as a result of an unintentional injury that took place neither in the home nor on the road, is shown in the following tables by the cause of injury and by place of occurrence.

Table 1. Number of Hospital Admissions, Resulting from Unintentional Injury Incurred Neither in the Home nor on the Road, for Children Aged 0-14, by Cause of Injury, for Year of Discharge Year Ending 31 March 2006 to 2008.

Cause of Injury	2005-06	2006-07	2007-08
Transport Accidents	536	528	522
Falls	3,466	3,387	3,242
Exposure to inanimate mechanical forces	919	821	803
Exposure to animate mechanical forces	321	309	304
Accidental drowning and submersion	3	6	4
Other accidental threats to breathing	13	8	10
Exposure to smoke, fire and flames	24	19	12
Contact with heat and hot substances	21	22	27
Contact with venomous animals and plants	8	14	9
Accidental poisoning by and exposure to noxious substances	117	126	110
Overexertion, travel and privation	31	14	23
Accidental exposure to other and unspecified factors	270	280	403
Assault	169	164	134
Other/unknown	47	42	36
Total	5,945	5,740	5,639

Source: Information Services Division (ISD) Scotland.

Notes:

These statistics are based on data collected on discharges from non-obstetric and non-psychiatric hospitals (Scottish Morbidity Record 01, SMR01). Patient injury categories that do not occur in the home or on the road are identified in SMR01 by selecting admission codes 34 and 35. Categories of cause of injury are based on the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-10), codes V01-X59, X85-Y09. Other/unknown category includes cases where there was no recorded external cause code, or the external cause code did not fall into one of the main categories.

Table 2. Numbers of Hospital Admissions as a Result of Unintentional Injuries That Occurred Neither in the Home nor on the Road, for Children Aged 0-14 by Place of Occurrence, for Year of Discharge Year Ending 31 March 2006 to 2008.

Place of Occurrence	2005-06	2006-07	2007-08
Home	49	51	57
Residential institution	24	12	16
School, other institution and public administrative area	621	571	508
Sports and athletics area	476	438	411
Street and highway	210	205	156
Trade and service area	68	85	68
Industrial and construction area	4	6	5
Farm	18	8	7
Other specified places	467	423	325
Unspecified place	3,437	3,383	3,540
Total	5,374	5,182	5,093

Source: Information Services Division (ISD) Scotland.

Notes:

These statistics are based on data collected on discharges from non-obstetric and non-psychiatric hospitals (Scottish Morbidity Record 01, SMR01). ICD-10 codes W00-X59, X85-Y09 may include a fourth digit that describes place of occurrence and therefore only these codes have been included in this analysis. Patient injury categories that are neither home injuries nor road traffic accidents are identified in SMR01 by selecting admission codes 34 and 35.

In responding to the 2009 Report Card, the Scottish Government considers development of a clear and robust evidence base on childhood injuries to be a priority. It has therefore commissioned and funded an unintentional injuries data collection pilot in order to assess the current level and quality of data collected. This pilot will help flag up perceived gaps in data collection. Further work may be necessary in collating and analysing accident data before taking targeted action in order to reduce the number of unintentional injuries in children.

We also published Good Places, Better Health: A New approach to the Environment and Health in Scotland in December 2008. This project is a collaboration led by health interests and ranging over policy interests across the Scottish Government as well as external stakeholders with an interest in unintentional injury and accident prevention, particularly among children.

The SMR (Scottish Mortality Record) national database holds data on children admitted to Scottish hospitals. SMR records data on unintentional injuries, defined by admission code and/or international classification of disease (ICD10) diagnosis codes. Validated SMR data is collected via hospital patient management systems and submitted electronically across a secure network to Information Services Division (ISD) Scotland, where it is stored in the national database.

Data relating to unintentional injuries in children is published as part of ISD''s annual unintentional injuries national statistics publication: http://www.isdscotland.org/isd/3066.html.

Data is also disseminated on an ad-hoc basis in accordance with ISD''s information request protocol.