Thursday, February 08, 2007

Childhood safety

Who is ultimately responsible for the safety of children at home, their parents or the Government?

Children of parents who have never worked or have been unemployed for a long time had 13 times the risk of dying from an accident and were 37 times more likely to die as a result of exposure to smoke, fire or flames than children of parents who worked in managerial or professional jobs.

"The inequalities between different socio-economic groups are also shocking. To tackle this, local bodies must apply concerted and rigorous action." - Michael O'Higgins, chairman of the Audit Commission.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

it seems weird to me, you'd think that the long term unemployed would have more opportunity to supervise their kids

Snafu said...

Anonymous, as I was writing my post I had the same thought!

However, it struck me that if they can't be bothered to find or keep a job, maybe they can't be bothered to look after their children either.