"It Bothers Me a Lot and It Is Difficult to Ensure My Children's Safety": A Phenomenological Study on Child Safety In a Coastal Slum Community In the Western Region of Ghana

Background and Purpose

Unintentional injuries remain a leading cause of mortality among children under five globally, with the burden disproportionately concentrated in low- and middle-income countries. Children residing in coastal slum communities face compounded vulnerabilities, including proximity to open water, fish-processing hazards, and limited parental supervision capacity shaped by demanding subsistence livelihoods. Despite growing interest in child safety promotion, research from West African coastal communities is virtually absent, creating a critical evidence gap for designing contextually appropriate interventions. This study aimed to explore parents' knowledge, perceptions, and practices regarding child safety in a coastal slum community in the Western Region of Ghana to inform safety-promoting interventions.

Methods

A phenomenological qualitative design was employed to foreground the lived experiences of parents navigating child safety in a hazardous environment. The study was conducted in Ngyeresia-Kakra, a coastal fishing community within the Sekondi-Takoradi Metropolitan Area, ranked 21st out of 261 districts on Ghana's multidimensional poverty index. Twenty parents of children under six years were purposively recruited using maximum variation sampling. Data were collected via semi-structured in-depth interviews guided by a researcher-developed interview guide and audio-recorded with participant consent. Interviews were transcribed verbatim, thematically analyzed, with coding conducted both inductively and deductively.

Results

Participants were predominantly female (n=17), aged 18–48 years. Three overarching themes emerged. First, parents demonstrated substantial knowledge of child safety concepts and were able to identify specific hazards (open sea, fish-smoking fires, stored petrol, sharp processing tools) and protective strategies (piggybacking toddlers, school enrollment as a structured safety net, restricting proximity to the shore). Second, parents perceived their environment as severely risky and regarded child safety as an absolute parental obligation tied to economic survival, avoiding medical costs and disability. However, a persistent hidden burden of caregiving emerged: the time-intensive and economically compulsory demands of fish processing and selling directly compete with supervision capacity, producing guilt, social stigma, and a sense of helplessness among parents. Third, a "rite of passage" belief that, injuries are an inevitable and even developmentally necessary feature of childhood coexisted with otherwise strong safety motivations, functioning as a barrier to injury prevention effort. Gender-differentiated practices were also documented, with boys perceived as requiring greater supervision due to risk-taking behavior. Faith and prayer featured prominently as a coping and safety strategy.

Conclusions and Implications

This study reveals that child injury risk in coastal slum communities is not primarily a knowledge deficit problem; parents possess meaningful safety awareness. Rather, injury risk is structurally embedded in livelihood demands that limit supervision capacity and culturally sustained by normalization of childhood injury. Interventions focused solely on parental education will be insufficient. Effective child safety promotion in these communities requires multi-level strategies: community-level structural changes (centralized fish-processing areas, supervised community play spaces), social work engagement to address the caregiving burden on mothers, and culturally sensitive reframing of the rite-of-passage narrative. The findings have direct implications for social work practice, child welfare policy in Ghana and across West Africa, and for the development of community-based injury prevention programs in low-resourced coastal settings.