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A Guide to Safety Conversations with Families

A man and a woman going over safety paperwork.Young children are curious and eager to learn. They depend on their caregivers to keep them safe by making sure that nothing can harm them.

Injuries are a serious health risk to young children, and many injuries happen at home. The good news is you can predict and prevent most injuries! Whether families bring up safety concerns or you do, children’s safety is important to discuss. This guide offers strategies that early childhood staff can use to have home safety conversations with families.

Follow these steps to talk to families about safety and help them make sure their home is safe:

  • Help families learn about the common causes of childhood injuries and how they happen.
  • Talk with family members about their child’s development and temperament to help them predict how their child will approach and react to the world.
  • Give tools, such as a home safety checklist, to help families find and remove hazards at home.

How to Have a Safety Conversation

Common Causes of Fatal Injuries to Young Children

  • Falls
  • Drowning
  • Fires and burns
  • Poisoning
  • Suffocation
  • Motor vehicle crashes

Thinking about when and how to have safety conversations with each family is important. A parenting curriculum may guide you; a family member may ask you about a safety concern; a child may be developing a new skill, such as getting ready to crawl; or you may see a hazard. You may also want to share information about some easy ways that families can protect their child from injury.

When you talk with families about safety, focus on what they are doing well to keep their child safe. Have a conversation that:

  • Focuses on the family’s and child’s needs
  • Allows you to share information and gives the family a chance to share information back with you
  • Respects the family’s cultural perspectives and traditions

Motivational interviewing (MI) is way to have conversations that helps people with making changes. It offers home visitors, family services staff, health staff, and other early childhood staff a way to have an informative and nonjudgmental conversation about a family’s safety concerns. Unless there is an urgent safety issue that needs a response at once, you first ask for and receive permission from the family to talk about a safety concern. Then you ask about the family’s perspective, guide them to set their own priorities, explore what they want to change, and choose an injury prevention strategy to get started.

MI uses three important strategies:

  • Collaborating: Build trust through relationships to partner with each of your families.
  • Evoking: Recognize and support each family’s desire to keep their child healthy and safe. Use reflective listening and open-ended questions to learn about the family’s ideas for what they can do to prevent injuries.
  • Respecting (a family’s autonomy): Acknowledge that each family has to decide what they want to change and encourage “change talk.”

MI is a collaborative conversation that can strengthen a family’s commitment and motivation to change.

When used with a home safety checklist, MI is an effective way to help families think of creative solutions to their safety concerns.

Conversation Starters

Use these conversation starters to explore safety issues with families. Start these conversations by asking for permission to talk about a safety concern.

How to Tell if a Family Is Ready to Talk About Childhood Injuries

When a family gives permission, you can talk about safety hazards and injury prevention strategies they can use to protect their child. For example:

  • “Families often ask me how to make sure their child can explore safely. What concerns about your child’s safety would you like to discuss?”
  • “Your baby is now able to roll over. This means crawling and walking aren’t too far off. Many families like to plan ahead. What questions do you have about how to prepare?”
  • “Many of the families in our program have questions about everyday items in the home that can be dangerous to a young child. What are your safety concerns?”

How to Talk About the Barriers to Improving Home Safety

When discussing a family’s safety concerns, keep in mind possible barriers to making changes. Consider the type of home and who handles home improvements, such as a landlord or other people who live in the home. For example:

  • “You’re not sure what to say to your grandmother about your concerns since you are living in her house. How might you bring this up with her so she can help you make her home safer for her grandson?”
  • “You have shared your concerns with your landlord several times, but he has not responded, and you don’t know what else to do. Would you like to talk about this to see if you can find a solution? What else could you try?”
  • “You told me that you have talked with the property manager about the broken tiles on the kitchen floor. You worry that your child will fall and get hurt. I brought you some information on tenants’ rights that may help you get the floor fixed. What can we do right now to protect your child?”
  • “Sometimes families who are staying in temporary housing or shelters will have concerns about safety but may not have a way to address them. We can think about this together to find some things you can do that might be helpful. What is your main concern?”

When to Use a Home Safety Checklist

You can use a checklist any time you talk about keeping children safe. A checklist is an easy-to-use tool to help families find possible hazards. Use a checklist when something changes in the home (e.g., the family moves, or someone joins the household) or as children grow. These conversations will continue because young children grow and develop quickly, especially from birth to age 3. When introduced early in your relationship with a family, a checklist can be an injury prevention reminder. For example:

  • “You told me you were worried about taking care of your baby. I have a safety checklist that we can look at together. It may help you see all the great things you have done already to make sure your baby is safe. We can also talk about anything on the checklist that you are concerned about. Would you like to talk about this next week?”
  • “Many families like using a safety checklist to help them figure out how to find and remove items from their home that could injure their child. I have a checklist with me. Would you like to look at it together?”

How to Discuss the Next Steps

Asking open-ended questions and giving a summary of your discussion are two easy ways to help families decide what action they want to take after they find a safety concern. For example:

  • “You know that it can be unsafe to give your baby a bath when the water temperature is too hot, but you aren’t sure what temperature your water heater is set at. You can ask your landlord about this, but in the meantime, if you’d like, we can discuss solutions. What can you do to bathe your child safely?”
  • “The checklist says that toys with small parts are a choking hazard for children under age 3. You said that you’re not sure how to make space in your living room for your older children’s toys so that your baby can’t reach them. I would love to brainstorm together with you. What are some changes you can make?”
  • “You mentioned that you are moving to a motel for a while, and you are worried there may not be a crib for your child. What are some ways you can set up a safe place for your baby to sleep?”

What to Say if You Notice a Hazard That You Need to Address Right Away

If you see something during a home visit that needs a response right away to protect a child from injury, name the issue and explain what they need to do instead of asking a question. For example:

  • “I know it’s hard to keep track of all the things you need to do to keep your children safe. But some cabinets in the kitchen where you keep your cleaning supplies don’t have any child-proof latches. Because these products have dangerous poisons, you need to store them where your child can’t reach them. Let’s find a safe place to put them now.” This is not a question because the family needs to address the issue at once.
  • “Using the checklist, we noticed that the crib is very near the window and that the window blind cord is dangling into the crib. This is dangerous because your child could get the cord wrapped around their neck and suffocate. I will bring you some wraps next week to wind up the cord, but let’s move the crib now so that the cord won’t be in reach.”

Through these conversations, you can help families recognize that they can make small but important changes to keep their child safe. You can also help families get free or low-cost safety equipment and connect families to community resources to help them address unsafe living conditions.

Safety conversations are ongoing. Remind families they always need to watch for changes in the environment and their child’s changing abilities as they grow. A child with new or emerging skills may be much more vulnerable to injury. Families who make sure the environment is safe and who supervise their children can prevent many childhood injuries.

Use the Parent, Family, and Community Engagement Simulation to practice responsive conversations with family members.

A young boy riding his bicyle wearing a helmet.

How to Choose a Safety Checklist

Home safety checklists are useful tools to talk with families about childhood injury and to find strategies to keep their children safe. Choose a home safety checklist that meets the specific needs of the families you serve.

Some checklists are organized by general injury prevention topics, and others are organized in one of three ways:

  • By developmental abilities. Using a checklist organized by age is an easy way to help families consider their child’s developmental abilities in relation to hazards for injury. You will want to choose a checklist that reflects the developmental abilities of the child and addresses the safety issues of all children in the household if the family has children in different age groups.
  • By hazard. Using a checklist organized by hazard makes it possible to have conversations about specific dangers to young children. You can also use this type of checklist to talk about a hazard that the family is worried about.
  • By room or area. Using a room-by-room or area-by-area approach allows families to make changes to one area of their home at a time.

You may also want to use other resources with your checklist since no checklist will address every cause of childhood injury. For example, when talking with a family who owns a firearm, you can share information about the importance of safely storing firearms by locking them up, so they are never accessible to children.

Remember that families may move, or they may stay in temporary housing, with limited ability to control the living conditions. Honoring families’ concerns for their children’s safety regardless of their living situation, being willing to listen to their concerns, and being available to help them address any urgent safety needs all help to build trust and increase the likelihood that they feel supported by the staff in your program.

Home Safety Checklists

Choose a home safety checklist that meets the needs of your program’s families. You may want to have a few checklists for your home safety and injury prevention conversations, depending on which is best for the family. Families who know how to use a checklist and can make changes to their environment create safe places for children to learn and grow. Share one or more of these checklists with families:

These checklists may not be ideal for families who are living in temporary housing or families experiencing homelessness. The Childproofing Checklist for Housing and Homeless Service Providers is not for families to use themselves, but you can use it to guide your discussions with them.

Read more:

,  Safety Practices