The injury rate for tiny tots living in Hawke's Bay has jumped, ACC figures show.
Data released this week revealed 4183 injury claims made for children under 5 in Hawke's Bay between January and November in 2014. This compared with 4066 claims made for the same period in 2013.
In Napier, 1612 claims were made from January to November 2014 while only 1591 were made in 2013. In Hastings, 2161 claims were made compared to 2088 last year while in Central Hawke's Bay, there were 275 claims - an increase in 20 claims from 2013.
Director at Lollipops Educare in Napier Jo Harris said accidents were a common occurrence with under 5-year-olds.
"The most common accident would be the grazed knees, bumps to the head and that kind of thing," she said. "It is also common for it to go unnoticed if young children need glasses so there is a lot of tripping, falling and misjudging equipment."
Children were, however, "definitely over-sheltered", as safety regulations were very strict at child centres, she said.
"I have worked in early childhood for 20 years and when they brought in the new safety standards for playgrounds, we had the most accidents for children about two years after that because children weren't able to learn about their balance and co-ordination and learn to take risks.
"I'll be interested to see what happens with the next generation coming through when they aren't able to do the things we did as children."
Ms Harris said the centre had had a lot of injuries from the use of safety equipment.
"We actually get more grazes from mats than what we do from good old fashioned grass."
Nationally, there were 106,322 ACC claims for children under 5 from January to November this year while there were 105,842 for the same period in 2013.
The most common cause of injuries this year were loss of balance, with more than 40,000 claims, ACC said. Collisions were the second most common injury at more than 10,000 claims.
Plunket's child safety advisor Sue Campbell said more could be done to prevent injuries in under 5-year-olds.
"A lot of these accidents, or a majority of them, are preventable and by that we mean that if the adult is aware of the age and stage that the child has developed mentally then they can make some changes to the home environment," she said.