The South Australian Safe Infant Sleeping Standards* are a comprehensive set of standards for placing infants less than 12 months old to sleep. These standards were developed to help reduce the occurrence of sudden unexpected deaths of infants during sleep. Several factors occur frequently in circumstances of these deaths. These factors are not causes of death in their own right. Rather, they increase the risk of infants dying after being placed to sleep. The Standards provide a consistent suite of messages that health professionals can use to guide the decisions families make about safe infant sleeping.
These factors include the infant not sleeping in an Australian standards-approved cot, parental smoking, not breast-feeding, bed-sharing and the infant not being placed on their back to sleep.
This chapter was originally published on the Committee’s website in July 2018: