According to SafeKids Worldwide, six children per day die from an unintentional home injury in the United States. This project was developed after several members of our team visited with mothers and children who had been hospitalized from a preventable injury that occurred in a shelter. This project is aimed at improving the health and well-being of children and their families by providing them a safe place to live, and by reducing unintentional injuries. We know that the emotional stress for a child living in a shelter is high, and so we hope to provide some relief by decreasing preventable physical injuries. The goal of this project is to identify safety needs at the 26 Family Shelters in the Greater Boston area and to provide an educational and resource intervention to make each of them safe. We are in the process of walking through each shelter and using our Family Shelter Safety Needs Assessment Form. This form was developed by public health professionals and physicians at Boston Medical Center, in collaboration with SafeKids Worldwide and our team here at Boston Children’s Hospital, to assess each room that a family occupies in the shelter for home safety in accordance with best practice guidelines. Once we complete this evaluation phase, we will begin planning interventions at each shelter. We will maintain ongoing relationships with each shelter director, providing resources and education as needed in the future. Our long term-goal is to create an assessment model that can be used by shelters nationwide to evaluate home safety conditions.
