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New Plymouth Injury Safe

New Plymouth Injury Safe Trust (NPIS) is a coalition of local organisations working together to achieve a safe community. New Plymouth District has been accredited as an International Safe Community since 2005.
 
“Our aim is to reduce the rate of deaths, hospitalisations and injuries by creating a positive safety culture and safer environments for everyone in the district. We look at the data and that helps us determine our priorities,” Alisha Stone, NPIS Manager, said.
 
“All charitable organisations are finding it hard at the moment. It’s a challenging environment to get funding from, but these issues aren’t going away for a number of reasons.”
 
A grant of $10k from Toi Foundation enabled the organisation to focus on two projects in the last year.
 
“The first project was about preventing youth self harm. We were hearing from the community that youth self harm was increasing. The funding enabled NPIS to complete a scoping process with stakeholders, agencies and people dealing with youth self harm. Next we will decide how we can best support agencies and people who are working out in the field, using evidence based strategies.”
 
The second project was working with the whānau of intermediate-aged kids around delaying the onset of drinking alcohol.

“All the research shows that the younger people start to drink alcohol, the greater the chance of alcohol related problems later in life,” Alisha said.
 
“This project was the first of its kind in New Zealand, working with parents of intermediate age kids, instead of teenagers. We asked Nigel Latta to speak about the importance of delaying the initiation of alcohol. Afterwards, we had focus groups with caregivers and whānau to discuss that message and talk about how we could reach a wider audience.”
 
“Both of these projects have been very rewarding for us, due to the positive impact they have on injury prevention in our community. Without the funding, we wouldn't be able to be agile and responsive to the needs of the community,” Alisha said.
 
“Many passionate people are doing great work with nonprofit organisations. We want to support them to help our young people become resilient.”

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