Streets ahead on safety: young people's participation in decision-making to address the European road injury 'epidemic'.

Full Abstract

This paper reports on Birmingham City Council's Streets Ahead on Safety project which aims to improve road safety and quality of life in an area of multiple deprivation where 87 000 people from largely Asian, immigrant backgrounds live. A third of residents are under 16 years old and 58% self-define their religion as Muslim. The area has a poor traffic accident record leading to high levels of killed or seriously injured children. Child accidental injury in Europe is reaching 'epidemic' proportions, requiring innovative, ameliorative approaches to redress. Existing UK school-based road safety initiatives rarely extend beyond the 'tokenistic', but this project endeavoured to encourage a highway authority, engineers and road safety officers to provide local young people with opportunities to participate in decision-making in the belief that the active engagement of young service users would lead to more effective and sustainable solutions to accident prevention. Embracing the city's ratification of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989), this project promoted young people's participation in decision-making around engineering plans for their local community. The project included 405 young people aged 9-11 years who conducted environmental audits, interactive road safety awareness and citizenship training, and engaged as decision-makers. Successful outcomes include increased knowledge of road and community safety issues, and the establishment of young people as stakeholders in the development of their own safety and active engagement with service providers in the development of engineering proposals. This paper highlights the potential dynamics of participation and the dilemmas it poses for relationships between service users and providers, and outlines some of the barriers confronted by young people in learning to be active participants.

Learn Faster Today Improve your study skills

Author information

Author/s: Kimberlee, Richard (R);

Affiliation: Faculty of Health and Social Care, University of the West of England, Bristol, UK. richard.kimberlee(-atsign-)uwe.ac.uk

Journal and publication information

Publication Type: Journal Article

Journal: Health & social care in the community (Health Soc Care Community), published in England. (Language: eng)

Reference: 2008-May; vol 16 (issue 3) : pp 322-8

Dates: Created 2008/04/17; Completed 2008/06/17;

PMID: 18328057, status: MEDLINE (last retrieval date: 11/6/2008)

Sourced from the National Library of Medicine. Abstract text and other information may be subject to copyright.

External Links for this article (including full text providers, if available):

Click Electronic Full-text Provider Links to see options for finding the electronic full text links to this article. Note there may be a subscription or fee required for access to the full text. See our FAQ for information on finding FREE full text articles.

This article may also be located in paper journal collections available in many libraries. Use the Journal and Publication Information above to find the full article.

MeSH headings (categories)

This article was linked to the MESH Headings shown below.

Accidents, Traffic - prevention & control
Adolescent
Child
Consumer Participation
Decision Making
Europe - epidemiology

Europe - epidemiology
Humans
Policy Making
Power (Psychology)
Safety
Wounds and Injuries - epidemiology

These are the highest related articles currently in the database:

See 100+ related articles.