If you believe your child is in immediate danger or a life-threatening situation, call emergency services on triple zero – 000.
Under our legislation, we don’t investigate individual children’s and families’ circumstances. If you suspect a child in Queensland is experiencing harm or neglect, please contact the Department of Children, Youth Justice and Multicultural Affairs.

Safer pathways through childhood

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Safer pathways through childhood

A framework to guide our child death prevention activities.

In addition to maintaining the Queensland Child Death Register, we are responsible analysing the information it holds to identify trends and patterns in child mortality and for conducting research to reduce the likelihood of child deaths. We have developed the Safer pathways through childhood framework to set the direction of its child death prevention activities for the next five years.

Under the Safer pathways framework, we will consider all the factors that may increase the risk of death during childhood – from individual behaviours or characteristics right through to broader social, political and historical factors. Our work is focused on using this information to help achieve health equity for all children. That means working towards ensuring that all children have the same opportunity to lead a full life and to reach their potential.

The framework provides an overview of how we will target child death prevention over the next five years and how we will highlight the experiences of groups of children at increased risk of death during childhood.

Each year, in consultation with stakeholders, we will identify specific prevention activities to address these priorities under an annual action plan.

 

 

Each year, in consultation with stakeholders, we will identify specific prevention activities to address these priorities under an annual action plan.

The Safer pathways through childhood action plan: 2022–23 has been released. This document details the actions we will take over the coming year to address the focus areas established under the framework.

We have a key role in improving the safety and wellbeing of Queensland’s children and their families and have a legislated responsibility to maintain a register of all child deaths occurring in Queensland, to report on trends and patterns, and to conduct research aimed at preventing future deaths.

This information paper was prompted by our previous research which had found an increase in the rate of pool drowning from 2014.

This report considers fatal and non-fatal immersion incidents of children aged 0–4 years in Queensland that have occurred in pools covered by Queensland’s swimming pool safety legislation (regulated pools). It uses information from the Queensland Child Death Register, immersion notifications and the Queensland Pool Register to identify regional patterns and findings about the two key methods of drowning prevention—pool fencing and supervision.