In many cases injury prevention is a small part of our stakeholders’ broader mission and deeply embedded in aspirations to support families and whānau to raise healthy kids who have the opportunity to safely explore and learn in their environments in order to grow and develop their full potential. It is very humbling to see how willing these organisations are to commit precious time and resource to increase their knowledge and champion injury-prevention messages in their day-to-day encounters with whānau or their policy and programme designs. Safekids has recently undertaken a review of its roles and capabilities to ensure we are well positioned to provide these diverse stakeholders with effective tools that enable them to share knowledge, build environments and encourage behaviours that keep our tamariki safe. In particular we have sought to increase our ability to work with community organisations to develop and implement programmes that are effective at overcoming barriers and motivating caregivers and children to make changes that are known to help keep children safe. We are also looking to increase the ability of our team to develop strategies that address inequities in child injury prevention which see Māori and Pacific children over-represented in many of our injury statistics. I look forward to introducing you to our new look team over the next few months. One of the highlights of the past few months has been the opportunity to work with Dave Letele (aka the Brown Buttabean) and his gorgeous whānau - Koreen, William, Tavita, Fabian and baby Brook - who have come on board as our social-media champions to promote child injury prevention messages. Dave is a well-known Samoan-Māori boxer and community advocate who works extensively with families in South and West Auckland, promoting weight loss and general health and well-being programmes. He has a real heart for New Zealand's Pacific and Māori communities and is passionate about the power of whānau. With Dave’s help we hope to build a powerful platform for Safekids and our community partners to share child injury prevention messages with mums, dads, grandparents, teachers, aunties, uncles and all our other caregivers who are working hard to keep tamariki safe. DIRECTOR MESSAGE FROM THE Over the past four months I have had the privilege to meet many members of the child injury prevention community working with whānau in grassroots organisations and clinical settings, developing policy and technical guidance in local body and government agencies and nurturing knowledge and building our evidence-base in university and research institutions around the country. 2 safekids news | April 2018 ISSUE No 79 Melissa Wilson, Safekids’ new Director with her children (from left) Oliver, Violet, Olympia and Eliza. SAFEKIDS AOTEAROA’S MISSION / to reduce the incidence and severity of unintentional injuries to children in Aotearoa aged 0-14 years. A MEMBER OF A MEMBER OF A SERVICE OF Safekids News is the quarterly publication of Safekids Aotearoa Some articles from other organisations do not necessarily reflect the views of Safekids Aotearoa. Safekids Aotearoa PO Box 26488, Epsom Auckland 1344, New Zealand ENQUIRIES / [email protected] safekids.nz /SafekidsAotearoa /SafekidsNZ /SafekidsNZ