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Queensland worst state for brain injuries to shaken babies

MORE children in Queensland are killed or left with severe brain injuries after being shaken than anywhere else in Australia.

Despite this, the Government's Safehands education campaign - trialled in 2007 to reduce this type of child abuse - has not been rolled out. The award-winning program is only operational in Ipswich.

When The Sunday Mail rang the Safehands 1800 number, it rang out three times.

Last week the Supreme Court in Brisbane reduced by three years the original sentence of a 22 year-old father who had earlier pleaded guilty to manslaughter after shaking his 19-day-old baby son to death in 2007.

Infants who are beaten or shaken are at the greatest risk of traumatic brain injury.

When Rebecca was two-years-old, she was shaken so badly by her carer that she was left blind, unable to speak and paralysed on her right side.

Now 17 - and after constant rehabilitation - the young woman who lives on Brisbane's southside with her mother, Simone, has battled to walk again, speaks with a slight slur and has only 50 per cent vision. She will never drive and has had to move schools because of bullying.

"I was asleep when it happened," her mother Simone, who was only 17 at the time, said. "My boyfriend woke me to say she was not breathing.

"I rushed to her room and found her limp with her eyes rolled back in her head."

Rebecca spent a month in hospital, and nine years in rehabilitation.

To cope, Simone moved back in with her parents and dedicated herself to rehabilitating her child.

The Queensland Government Child Death Case Review Committee's report into fatalities between 2005 and 2008 found one in three victims was less than one year old.

A study of admissions to Brisbane's Royal Children's Hospital between 2004 and 2008 found 18 cases of inflicted traumatic brain injury were received from Brisbane's northern suburbs alone.

The study was done by the University of Queensland's Melissa Kaltner.

Brain Injury Australia Executive Officer Nick Rushworth said the real rate of inflicted traumatic brain injury to children might be dramatically higher than hospital admission numbers show.

"During 2007-08, (more than) 12,000 of the notifications of physical abuse made to Australia's child protection agencies were substantiated," Mr Rushworth said.

Drawing from overseas surveys - that show for every child admitted to hospital with an inflicted brain injury, there were up to 150 others who suffered at the hands of caregivers - the Queensland figures "were just the tip of the iceberg", he said.

University of Southern Queensland researchers evaluated the Safehands campaign, recommending it be expanded to include other Queensland centres".

The Queensland Police Service has allocated $25,000 each financial year from 2008 to 2010 for Safehands.