| The leading cause of morbidity and mortality in children in the U. S. is unintentional injury (Center for Disease Control Child Injury Report, 2000 to 2006), but there is little information about homeless mothers with children and child unintentional injury. Frencher et al. (2010) compared lower socioeconomic families with children with housing to homeless families with children, and found that unintentional injury was 13% higher among homeless children. Mothers who are homeless often need to navigate a variety of temporary housing and may lack understanding of child safety hazards in strange environments, limiting their ability to ensure their children's safety (Tymchuk, Lang, Sewards, Lieberman, & Koo, 2003).;The purpose of the quasi-experimental project was to provide a child safety hazard education program in a shelter for mothers who are homeless by: (a) assessing homeless mother's baseline knowledge of child safety environmental hazards; (b) providing a hands-on child safety hazard education program; (c) evaluating the homeless mother's knowledge of child safety hazards following the safety hazard education program; and (d) determining what homeless mothers say about the child safety hazard education program.;Scores of the mothers ability to identify 34 possible safety hazards on the pretest ranged from five (14.7%) to 32 (94.1%) prior to the educational program. When mothers were asked if they had received previous safety hazard education, less than half (47.8%) of the homeless mothers indicated receiving some previous information. Overall, there was 23.9% improvement in the ability of women to identify safety hazards following completion of child safety hazard education class and t-test analysis revealed a significant improvement in applied knowledge (t = 5.99, p < .001). Interviews revealed that this program provided homeless mothers with increased awareness of home safety hazards, increased knowledge of the importance of home assessment, increased self-confidence, and the desire for more knowledge regarding home safety education. Results suggest advanced practice nurses should consider hands-on, targeted child safety hazard education with applied simulation for mothers in low income, high risk families in the primary care setting or in their communities. More research also needs to be done regarding unintentional injuries and children in families who are homeless. |
