Empower people to better understand the risks and make safe choices to ensure a safe home with negligible risk of unintentional injury. Promote safer home environments. Promote and facilitate effective training, skills and knowledge in home accident prevention across all relevant organisations and groups. Improve the evidence base. Scope of the strategy For the purposes of this strategy is defined as: “home” any type of house, including an apartment, farmhouse, caravan or weekend cottage, together with its outbuildings, garden, yard or farmyard, driveway, path, steps and boundaries or common areas, e.g. lifts, lobbies, corridors and stairwells. It need not be the home of the injured person. In this context does not refer to residential institutions such as nursing homes “home” or prisons, or temporary accommodation such as a hotel, boarding house or hospital. These categories of residential settings are governed by regulations to manage the environmental risks and, to some extent, behavioural risks. Nursing homes, specifically, afford a greater degree of supervision than is available to many elderly people who live alone in their own homes. This supervision is significant both for preventing accidents and for responding quickly to accidents. The safety of residents is a core consideration in the inspection of these settings by the Regulation and Quality Improvement Authority (RQIA) and other agencies. Notwithstanding the differences between domestic settings and those residential settings that are not within the scope of the strategy, it is expected that some of the measures that will implement the strategy will be applicable in residential settings. Priority groups Most home accidents can be prevented by identifying their causes and removing these, or reducing people’s exposure to them. The environments in which people live do much to determine injury risks and opportunities for injury prevention.
Empower people to better understand the risks and make safe choices to ensure a safe home with negligible risk of unintentional injury. Promote safer home environments. Promote and facilitate effective training, skills and knowledge in home accident prevention across all relevant organisations and groups. Improve the evidence base. Scope of the strategy For the purposes of this strategy “home” is defined as: any type of house, including an apartment, farmhouse, caravan or weekend cottage, together with its outbuildings, garden, yard or farmyard, driveway, path, steps and boundaries or common areas, e.g. lifts, lobbies, corridors and stairwells. It need not be the home of the injured person. In this context “home” does not refer to residential institutions such as nursing homes or prisons, or temporary accommodation such as a hotel, boarding house or hospital. These categories of residential settings are governed by regulations to manage the environmental risks and, to some extent, behavioural risks. Nursing homes, specifically, afford a greater degree of supervision than is available to many elderly people who live alone in their own homes. This supervision is significant both for preventing accidents and for responding quickly to accidents. The safety of residents is a core consideration in the inspection of these settings by the Regulation and Quality Improvement Authority (RQIA) and other agencies. Notwithstanding the differences between domestic settings and those residential settings that are not within the scope of the strategy, it is expected that some of the measures that will implement the strategy will be applicable in residential settings. Priority groups Most home accidents can be prevented by identifying their causes and removing these, or reducing people’s exposure to them. The environments in which people live do much to determine injury risks and opportunities for injury prevention.