Keeping Children Safe At Home and in the Community

Steve Adubato talks to Carol Ann Giardelli, MEd, Director of Safe Kids New Jersey, Central Jersey Family Health Consortium, about the importance of educating and providing resources for families in New Jersey to help keep children safe in their homes and in the community.

9/14/19 #112

Excerpt:

"We are pleased to welcome Carol Ann Giardelli, director of Safe Kids New Jersey, also Central Jersey Family Health Consortium. Good to see you. Thank you. Good to be here. You were on with us a while back? Yes I was. We're talking about trying to keep our kids safe? Absolutely. Tell everyone what your organization does? Well Safe Kids is actually a worldwide non-profit dedicated to preventing injuries to children. It's the number one way that kids die in this country, and in the world, just through injuries. And they could... 90 percent of them could be prevented. What can be prevented? By the way, we're making sure your website is up, so people can find out more. Go ahead. Great. What could be prevented are the leading killers of kids, and they basically fall into several categories, falls, traffic crashes, poisoning, drowning, and fires and burns. Those are the leading ways that children get hurt. Let's be more specific about prevention. What are some of the... I don't want to say easier, because nothing's easy. The smartest things for parents to do? Well, there are some tangible solutions that are ready for all of us, hopefully, such as simple things like walking around your entire car before you back out of the driveway. Little things that we try to make people aware of. Obviously wearing safety belts, using car seats, bike helmets. For some people, those solutions may not be tangible, they may not be readily available to them. There are intangible solutions, such as active supervision. Making sure that you set the example for your child and practicing safety rules within your home. It's so interesting. I don't like to disclose this, but I will. I was riding bikes with our daughter the other day, and I made sure she had her helmet on. Did you have yours on? No. And I shouldn't say that, but I'm gonna be honest about this. Yeah. Absolutely. And she called me on it. Good for her. We had to go back. Yeah. I had to put the helmet on. But it should never have happened. That... well... I should have set a better example. And you know, hindsight is 20/20. So thank goodness nothing happened on that trip. But now, you'll be more aware. You get lucky? Absolutely. But again, it's... is it... is it true, not just when it comes to safety for our children or trying to keep our kids safe, that it's less what we say, more what we do? The children are looking towards us for... to set the example. So if we tell them, "You have to wear your helmet, but mommy or daddy doesn't," it really is not..."