PL005. Child Safety Across Settings: Protecting Children from Violence and Injuries

Abstract

Children across Europe continue to face a dual burden of unintentional injuries from road traffic crashes, drowning, burns, falls, poisonings, leisure and sport, as well as intentional harms, including violence, neglect, and bullying. While child injury mortality has declined in several domains, injuries remain one of the leading causes of premature death and disability in young people and stark inequalities exist within and across countries. Unintentional injuries rank among the top causes of child mortality in Europe. Unintentional injuries due to abuse, neglect and unsafe childhood homes are often unrecognised and consequently neither reported nor addressed during childhood or in later life. Children, young people, and families often lack access to early support programs, schools may not be fully equipped to provide comprehensive safety and mental health interventions, and health systems frequently lack the structures to collect and share data.Persistent data gaps further limit progress. While hospital mortality data are routinely collected, injuries in the community, prehospital deaths, long-term disability, rehabilitation outcomes, and patient-reported outcome and experience measures are inconsistently captured. This restricts benchmarking, resource targeting, and the tailoring and scaling up of effective interventions.Article 19 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, to which many countries in Europe are party, decrees that “States Parties shall take all appropriate legislative, administrative, social and educational measures to protect the child from all forms of physical or mental violence, injury or abuse, neglect or negligent treatment, maltreatment or exploitation, including sexual abuse, while in the care of parent(s), legal guardian(s) or any other person who has the care of the child.” EU-level frameworks provide important opportunities to address these challenges through the prism of human rights and the duties to respect, protect and fulfil the rights of the child.The EU Strategy on the Rights of the Child and the Child Guarantee provide policy anchors that embed child safety within education, social protection, and urban planning. Complementing this, WHO initiatives on trauma and emergency care, drowning prevention, and road safety call for integrated surveillance, stronger paediatric trauma pathways, and continuity of rehabilitation. The EU Road Safety Policy Framework (2021–2030) promotes a Safe System approach and key performance indicators that can be adapted to children’s mobility, such as safer school zones, helmet and restraint use, and paediatric post-crash care.This panel will synthesize the latest epidemiological evidence from European and international sources and highlight the gaps in the data and evidence bases. It will draw on and describe initiatives where evidenced based intervention are established: positive parenting programmes, safe school streets, cycling infrastructure, home, leisure, and sports safety programs, as well as water-safety education, family centres, school based resilience and sexual violence prevention programmes. The social determinants of health also underpin risk of injury in childhood in many areas. Groups at higher risk of injury include migrant, rural, and low-income children in turn highlighting inequalities in access to services. We will propose a roadmap for 2025–2030 that includes harmonized child-focused indicators, integrated injury registries covering rehabilitation and patient-reported outcomes, workforce training, and child-rights-based implementation strategies.A particular focus will be the home, leisure, and sports environments, which remain high-risk settings but are often overlooked in policy debates. Linking acute trauma care with long-term psychosocial and community-based support will also be emphasized. This includes specialized rehabilitation services and discharge planning to enable the reintegration of children into their communities.Finally, the panel will explore whether there is a role for digital and community-based tools in empowering families and educators. Mobile platforms, school-centered safety programs, and community-led campaigns may bridge gaps in awareness of injury and access to information. Nevertheless, due consideration is required, including in terms of commercial determinants and societal norms and pressures, so as to ensure children are not harmed, exposed to undue risks and, critically, are not exploited. By aligning national practices with EU and WHO frameworks, the discussion will stress the need for cross-sector collaboration, standardized surveillance, and inclusive policy development. The session aims to deliver a shared call to action: building a robust, data-driven, and equitable European child safety agenda that ensures every child can grow, learn, and play in safe and supportive environments.