Objectives To explore parents perceptions of barriers and facilitators to injury prevention.

Background Even if we develop interventions that are effective and cost-effective in preventing falls, poisoning and scalds among young children at home, we often do not know whether parents will use these interventions. Unless we understand barriers to and facilitators for parents using injury prevention interventions in the home it is unlikely we will be able to develop interventions that parents can and do use and are effective.

Methods We will recruit parents participating in a multi-centre case–control study of fall, scald and poisoning injuries in children under 5 years. We will undertake semi-structured interviews with parents of children with and without injuries a range of injuries and varied socioeconomic backgrounds. Framework analysis will be used.

Results Reporting results from 64 interviews we will describe commonalities and differences according to a child's age, gender, socioeconomic status, injury type and whether they have experienced an injury. We will describe barriers and facilitators to injury prevention in the home, whether and how these vary according the age and gender of the child and the socioeconomic status of the family.

Conclusion The findings will show how parents perceptions of barriers to and facilitators for injury prevention can vary and how these need to be taken into account to develop interventions likely to be implemented by parents. This work can therefore contribute to the development of evidence based interventions.