ACC halts Safekids funding from 2027
Monday, 8 December 2025
Safekids, the injury prevention service of Starship Hospital, is the latest organisation to face funding cuts from ACC as the agency cracks down on injury prevention spending.
ACC slashed funding to WaterSafety NZ, from March next year, as it pulls away from injury prevention while facing ballooning costs.
More than $2 million has been committed by ACC to Safekids over the next 18 months, but that will end in 2027.
ACC deputy chief executive of prevention Renee Graham said they had “identified that the current initiatives have not had a measurable impact on injury claims”.
“As a result, we will stop funding current initiatives in 2027 and work alongside Safekids on opportunities to improve the impact of investments in initiatives to reduce injuries to children.”
Read more:
Safekids was set up by the same founders as Starship and is funded by ACC, the Ministry of Health and the Starship Foundation. Its aim is to reduce the number and severity of serious and traumatic accidental injuries that put young children up to 14 years old in hospital for more than 24 hours.
Last week, ACC chief executive Megan Main told a select committee while ACC was “not giving up on injury prevention”, there would be some “difficult decisions around things that aren't working”.
She called injury prevention a “really complex space … We can't wrap the country in cotton wool”.
In regards to WaterSafety NZ, Graham said they were not seeing any “measurable change” around drowning-related claims.
If more programmes would be cut, Graham said, “I don’t think there’s any this financial year but there are definitely programmes that we’re working with that aren’t having as much impact as they could have and we’re working with those providers”.
Graham said she did not expect further programme cuts this financial year, but acknowledged some initiatives were not having the desired impact and that ACC was working with those providers.
A video obtained by The Post last month confirmed ACC was deprioritising injury prevention, with chief executive Megan Main saying they needed to “free up time, space, resource, effort to do those other things”.