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Introduction

Good morning and welcome to the NSW Commission for Children and Young People.

It’s great to see such a big turnout for today’s seminar brought to you by the NSW Injury Risk Management Research Centre at the University of NSW and The Commission for Children and Young People.

Before I continue, I would like to thank Allen for conducting the Welcome to Country and acknowledge the traditional owners of this land and pay my respect to their elders, both past and present.

I am extremely pleased that this seminar is happening.

We’re very privileged to welcome a range of professionals with extensive knowledge in child safety and development to explore the tensions between child play and freedom and an increasingly risk adverse environment.

Any discussion about injury prevention must start from a point where we acknowledge our responsibility as adults to make the world a safe and friendly place for children and young people.

Part of that responsibility is taking on board what kids say, and what the research says about how risky environments impact on them.

As we all know – play and physical activity are as fundamental a part of any childhood as the provision of food, clothes and somewhere to live.

Play with parents and other children is crucial to ongoing development. It affects amongst other things, the development of trusting and caring relationships and an overall sense of well-being.

I believe the idea of well-being is a particularly important part of today’s discussions. In providing safe environments for play and physical activity, we are doing much more than simply minimising risk, we are creating a place where kids can enjoy themselves and feel good.

Early last year the Commission published a report about children’s understandings of well-being. We spoke with 126 children and young people aged between eight and 15 years from around New South Wales about what well-being means to them.

Many of our conversations with kids during this study were about issues that I am sure will be discussed in more detail today. These were – the importance of play and physical activity for children; the importance of feeling and being safe; that children want to be challenged as they grow; and how to balance taking risks and avoiding injury.

These issues can engender some great conversations for those of us with kids, particularly around the family table, and I know we’re all looking forward to hearing our speakers today as they explore them in detail.

I’ll just touch on a few of the interesting points that the kids raised in the well-being conversations.

The importance of play and physical activity in childhood

I want to start by asking the questions – ‘Why do children play and how is play and physical activity important to their sense of well-being?’

Children participate in play for a range of reasons.

Mostly, they play because it’s fun and makes them feel good. It’s also how they learn to make sense of their world.

It’s how they develop their sensory and motor skills and where they learn and practice language, maths and sciences; and where they experiment with their relationships.

All these learning experiences are improved when kids’ play activities and environments are creative, stimulating and challenging.

Child friendly environments were described as places where children could have fun, meet with other children and play.

Children also told us that activities, including formal sports, mucking around, informal hobbies, educational activities and special occasions with family and friends were important to their sense of well-being.

This was not so much because of the activity, but because the activity was associated with fun and freedom from constraints such as rules and routine. It also provides a way for them to feel competent.

Play builds connections

When parents play with their kids they feel great too.

And for kids, having their parents involved in their play is an important but often under-estimated aspect of family interaction.

With the increase in families where both parents work and the number of hours worked, many parents have limited time to get involved in their children’s play.

Yet when adults get involved with kids play and the places we build for kids’ play then it fosters a sense of connection by the kids and families that use the play area. 

These play areas become valuable meeting places that help to strengthen community bonds and values.

Children told us during our well-being conversations that the design and physical features of the natural and built environment can provide a sense of well-being. They can make a community seem safe or unsafe for the child and influence how they feel.

Our research found that children feel secure learning something new when they perceive that adults could appropriately manage any risks that were involved.

Feeling unsafe

Some children said they felt that there aren’t enough safe places in the community to go out and play.

Traffic was the main public danger mentioned by children that limited their capacity to explore their local environments.

A 10-year-old boy described how living on a busy road meant he was not allowed to ride his bike freely:

“I used to be allowed to like ride by myself just around the block and everything with my friends, like when I was really little. My friends used to live next to me and we just rode around but now I can’t because it’s busy and anything could happen.”

A risky environment stopped this boy from riding his bike and prevented him from being able to interact with his friends in this particular way. It also negatively affected his view of his local community, possibly stopping him exploring his neighbourhood, caused a feeling of physical insecurity and anxiety that he could be exposed to harm.

Lack of safety was attributed by some children as a decline of community spirit. Some children also expressed fear about global threats such as war and terrorism and had a general insecurity about their own future, and of their community and society.

Feeling unsafe could therefore compromise well-being because children would live in a risk-averse way to manage risk.

For some children these concerns meant they lived life in a restrictive, guarded way, either as a result of restrictions imposed by others or themselves.

These concerns illustrate the importance of providing safe places to play, with injury prevention an integral part of these safe spaces. Safety and injury prevention are important.

The importance of safety and injury prevention

Parents love their children and of course they want their kids to be safe.

Parents are the people who kids turn to for safe-keeping.

There were two aspects to this: a sense of being cared for combined with trust that parents will provide protection; and the practical things that parents do to keep children safe such as making the household physically secure; teaching safe behaviours; and making sure that children don’t place themselves in unsafe situations or do unsafe things.

So its important jobs that parents have. And as we all know, the sad reality is that some injuries have lasting effects such as disability, disfigurement and reduced quality of life, and occasionally they result in death.

As Commissioner, another hat I wear is that of Convenor of the NSW Child Death Review Team. By researching risks, identifying trends, making recommendations to government bodies and advising other organisations, it is hoped that we can contribute to minimising risk and injury to children.

In the 12 years since its inception, the Team has developed considerable knowledge about the deaths of children and young people in NSW.

Risk-taking behaviour is a recurring contributing factor in child deaths.

The need for challenges in order to grow

There is a fine line between risks that can cause injury or harm and providing challenges in children’s lives so they grow.

Activities that extend children, where they feel they are achieving something, learning something new or feel competent at the activity are associated with general well-being.

As kids grow, their abilities and capabilities change and develop. How many times have you heard a young person say, “My parents treat me like I’m a child!” In this situation the young person no longer sees themselves as a child, yet their parent still does and gives them responsibility accordingly.

In our well-being conversations, children often spoke how it was important for these boundaries to be negotiated as they change. They described how boundaries could become restrictive or inappropriate when they felt their parents did not fully appreciate how much they had changed.

Understanding and respecting their parents desire to protect them did not take away the dilemma. Finding a balance between being cared for and learning through experience was important.

Wrapping kids in cotton wool might make parents feel more secure, but it can do the opposite to some children. Kids tell us they need to have power to make decisions in order to feel in control of their life.

Bruises, scratches and scrapes are a scary but natural part of growing up. Broken arms, twisted ankles and trips to the emergency department are not ideal, but they occur.

Obviously we want children to be cared for properly and minimise any risk of injury, however in fixing one problem we don’t want to replace it with others. We might cause children to be anxious, nervous or afraid to challenge themselves if we create environments that are excessively risk-managed because of our fear of risk.

Finding the balance between maximising challenge and minimising risk of injury

From whichever perspective you approach these issues, the big question that today’s seminar will address is a very hard one – how do we find the balance between giving children challenges and reducing injury?

Ultimately, there is no simple answer, no right or wrong solution. We must not ignore our responsibility to provide safe and secure environments for children but we must also consider how the decisions we make will impact on the everyday lives of kids.

Providing safe play environments in the extreme where children no longer have fun, essentially defeats our common purpose – to let children play, be challenged and grow.

Conclusion

As a community of adults we have a responsibility to help protect our kids from injury and harm.
 
And there is a lot of very positive work that has already been done to make a difference to kids’ lives.

Pool fencing legislation, high standards for infant car restraints, compulsory helmets for cyclists, and occupational health and safety legislation are examples of how we already act to keep kids safe.

The Commission also works on a daily basis to safe-guard kids by managing systems to ban known sex offenders from working with children; developing ways to identify situations where risk can be minimised; and working with organisations to educate and advise how they can achieve child-safe and child-friendly environments.

When I spend time with kids, they tell me time and time again that it’s very important that they feel safe and secure. They also tell me it’s equally important that they have a sense of agency and to move freely through their world.

This is why it’s important for us all to use today’s seminar and the wealth of expertise gathered here as an opportunity to share information and work towards finding the balance between maximising challenge and minimising the risk of injury.

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