Safe Community Lääne County

Country: Estonia
Number of Inhabitants: 27,680
Programme Started Year: 2007
International Safe Communities Network Membership: 2010
Programme:http://www.lmv.ee/index.php?id=36099
County:http://www.lmv.ee/index.php?id=35919

For further information contact:
Hele Leek-Ambur
Lääne County Government
Lahe 8, Haapsalu
Läänemaa
Estonia
E-Mail: hele.leek@gmail.com

Full application report:
www.phs.ki.se/csp/pdf/safecommunities/laane_county.pdf

Long-term sustainable programs covering genders and all ages, environments and situations.

There are several major programmes dealing with injury prevention, safety promotion.

In 2005-2006 a 3-year- trauma prevention program was developed for 2007-2009 that was financially supported by Estonian Health Insurance Fund.

Also the Safety Council is implementing injury prevention and safety promotion goals documented in County Strategy document 2007-2013 (added in Estonian, goals described in document earlier).

National Strategy for Cardiovascular diseases prevention county action plan covers also safety promotion ideas.

As for the funding of Lääne county government and contact partners are not sufficient, we also applied in addition resources from Norwegian fund.

All programmes have detailed action plans and cover all ages and genders, environments and situations. Within the programmes, smaller projects to promote safety and fight juvenile crime have initiated.

Programs that target high-risk groups and environments, and programs that promote safety for vulnerable groups.

The programme covers the following safety promotion activities:

FOR THE AGE GROUP:

Children, 0-14 years

0-3 years ~ 50 children

3-7 years ~ 1000 children

7-14 years ~ 2000 children

Prevention work through kindergartens (4 Heath Promoting Kindergartens of ) and parenting classes.

Educational seminars (traffic, first aid, traumas) twice a year and counselling (by specialists).

Interactive plays (kindergarten and elementary school).

Youth, 15-24 years:

years ~1000 youngsters

18- 24 years ~500 young adults

Preventive lectures for schoolchildren and staff (physical and psychological environment).

Contests – drawings, posters, ideas- on safety promotion and injury prevention issues.

Camps- first aid, rescue, fire fighting, traffic etc issues.

Adults, 25-64 years (~ 20 000):

Campaigns (newspaper, outdoor media) – alcohol, traffic safety, health behaviour.

Involving in community issues, giving possibility to be part of changing community safety (participating in municipality health councils, taking part in health forums).

Educational seminars and lectures for specialists and other interested groups (health behaviour, counselling, safety).

Promotion of physical activity.

Elderly, 65+ years (~200):

Print and video materials about safety at home, on the streets, about physical activity.

Educating social workers on the special needs on elderly.

Swimming and pole-walking lessons for elderly.

AT THE FOLLOWING ENVIRONMENTS:

Home:

Educational pamphlets (smoke alarms, alcohol consumption prevention).

Traffic:

Traffic-lessons in schools.

Campaigns – No Car Day.

Traffic Safety Curriculum in Haapsalu College.

Occupational:

Educational seminars for organisations and institutions on occupational health.

Introducing the idea of Health Promoting Workplaces Network in Lääne County.

School:

Educational seminars (traffic, first aid, traumas) and counselling, contests – drawings, posters, ideas- on safety promotion and injury prevention issues.

Introducing Health Promoting Schools' Network (9 schools of are HPS), participating.

Introducing Childrens' behaviour and School Safety manuals to county schools (violence prevention etc).

Education of teachers, staff and parents.

Sports:

Youngster's physical activity studies.

Registering all sports clubs, stadiums etc, and evaluation of their safety (educated staff, training conditions' evaluation).

Promoting exercising and sports, fitness.

Leisure:

Information about places to spend free time (youth centre, sports clubs, day centres).

Organizing control control steads – road safety, nightclubs, pubs, youth gathering places).

Violence Prevention:

Victims', parents' counselling, media campaigns.

Police has 6 different projects regarding alcohol consumption, crime prevention, underage smoking, have lectures in schools and organizations. In addition they make contol steads, organize surveillance and give information via media.

Partner for counselling services is West-Estonian Counselling Centre. They offer group and individual therapy. In cooperation with Haapsalu College surveys are conducted to find out the reasons and work out necessary measures for individual cases.

Suicide Prevention:

West-Estonian Counselling Centre offers suicide counselling for target groups. A new suicide-survey is being developed to find out specific risks and prove the need of self-help groups in county. A weak spot is that only 4 people in the county own necessary profession. Creating necessary networks (sending people to Tallinn , bringing specialists here) wider than the county is very important. Programs aiming at “High Risk-Groups” 22% of population: Minimum wage- 16% of population Necessary professional counselling programmes ~ 130 persons.

At the moment, county counselling development plan for years 2011-2015 is being developed.

Programs aiming at ”High risk-groups”:
Considering the program objectives and data of statistics available the high-risk groups and areas were identified as children, young adults, elderly, road-safety, home and leisure time environments.

SURVEILLANCE OF INJURIES:

Following Cardiovascular Diseases and Cancer, Injuries is the third largest reason for premature death in Estonia. The most vulnerable target groups are children and youngsters (in particular, at age of 15 – 19), the group of young adults (at age of 20 – 44) and elderly people over 75.

Regrettably, there still does not exist a common injury registry in Estonia. We use the data available, from official health care statistics where injuries are documented as diseases, although the causes of injuries could be not clearly appeared.

PUBLICATIONS:

Safety newspaper (twice a year).

Posters, pamphlets.

STAFF:

The project manager and cross-sectional team have been the major driving force of the project. County health promotion specialist (project manager) has acted as an executive power of all meetings and has also been a spoke person to public.

ORGANIZATION:

Health promotion activities started in Lääne County already in 1991. At that time, several public health related projects were financed by Estonian Health Insurance Fund. Cross-sectional teamwork related injury prevention started in 1997.

On 2001, a county health board was established, which implemented national drug, HIV, alcohol and tobacco prevention strategies on local level. On 2005, national cardiovascular disease prevention programme was launched, more responsibility was put on local level and the board was renamed.

Since 2007, the board that coordinates public health in Lääne County , has been called

“Turvalisuse teemakoda” the Safety Council. For the implementation of injury prevention and safety promotion ideas, a cross-sectional team of interested parties was gathered together. The Safety Council consists of 21 persons: County Government youth and sports specialist, social worker, education specialist; county doctor, Lääne region municipalities' representatives (5 people), Labour inspector, rescue prevention specialist, Road safety prevention specialist, hospital leader, police youth, traffic inspector, children protection specialist, Haapsalu College health promotion curriculum coordinator and traffic safety curriculum coordinator. The joint county strategy planning opening meeting took place in Haapsalu October 2007, all interested organisations and people were invited to participate. That meeting was also the basis for Safety Council; it gathered together all key persons and organisations.

The Safety Council is a tool to fulfil the specific targets, it has no indicators of its own.

Also a Safety Promotion C ontract between Lääne County , Local Municipalities , the Police, the Hospital, NGO's, schools, kindergartens, etc was signed. With that contract, each member takes on responsibility to promote the ideas and also finance certain activities.

The specific agreements within the contract are:

• To share information, cooperate between parties
• Collect and compare statistics of injuries etc with county government
• To increase municipalities health intersectional teams' capacity to promote community health
• To strengthen cooperation between sectors
• Collect all information of projects, campaigns etc
• The contract coordinates activities that parties have taken on to them and monitors the outcomes
• The meetings take place every 3 months, and outcomes are evaluated, results are presented to County Government and public at the end of the year
• Partners are motivated and empowered during process; everyone fulfils their obligations.
  

Partners do prevention work in following areas:

Road administration, traffic safety

Rescue service- educational seminars and informing

Police- crime prevention and behavioural seminars

Municipalities- community development.

The main idea of the Contract is to make Läänemaa a safer place to live, work, study and grow up. Our vision for year 2013 is: Lääne County is the safest place of Estonia . The indicators of safety promotion for the county are to decrease the number of accidents by 50% by 2012, accident related deaths among grown-ups are not to exceed 5, among children the number should be 0.

International Commitments:
Members of cross-sectional groups have participated in Estonian and international seminars and conferences (Rapla County, Estonia; Bergen, Norway; Cape Town, South Africa; Merida, Mexico).