The effects of a burn prevention program on child-care providers

Abstract

Since fire and burns are the second leading cause of injury to young children up to age 4, fire and burn prevention education and training must reach the people who care for young children to be effective. Increasingly larger percentages of young children are cared for in out-of-home settings, including child-care centers and family child-care facilities. The majority of children, however, are still cared for by their parents or other relatives, for all or part of the day. Thus, there was a need for an injury prevention program for child-care providers in different settings. A group of experts in a variety of fields developed a burn prevention curriculum as part of a comprehensive injury prevention project. These experts represent a variety of related fields, including injury prevention, early childhood education, child-care administration, instructional design, and evaluation. Operators of child-care facilities, parents, and care providers were involved in the planning and implementation of a training workshop. The program was tested with 141 child-care providers at seven sites. Subjects included child-care center staff, family child-care operators, and parents of young children. Materials included an instructor manual, coursebook, video, and test booklet. Subjects' knowledge, attitudes, and practices intentions were tested before and after the training. Subjects also completed a program evaluation. Results indicated significant improvement in knowledge, attitudes, and practices intentions for the total group and for subjects at each site. Gains made by center staff and family day-care providers were significant on all three measures, as they were for parents on knowledge and practices. Measures of attitudes and injury prevention practices indicated a high level of acceptance of program goals. A large majority of the subjects said the program was useful and interesting. An analysis of the test results by objective indicated that subjects had improved their knowledge scores on each objective. They had the highest achievement on topics related to understanding characteristics of burns and understanding the hazards and prevention techniques related to smoke, matches, lighters, and hot surface burns. An important finding was that child-care providers in different environments can be instructed in burn prevention using the same program. Injuries are not accidents. If they were random, unpredictable acts of God, it would make little sense to talk about preventing them. But injuries can be scientifically understood and societally controlled by modifying physical agents, environments, and behaviors. Injury is not mysterious. It will take a concerted effort by a large and varied group of individuals in order for injury prevention to succeed.