Child Safety Week 2020

With an increasing amount of time at home right now, taking a spare hour to consider how to best protect the little ones we live with will be time well spent. Making and maintaining a safe environment at home will not only help to protect children but also enable maximum fun to take place. 

Anyone looking after a child at the moment certainly deserves all the tea or coffee they can drink.  However, something as simple as a recently brewed cuppa can be a threat for an infant or toddler who could be at risk from pulling it over themselves. One of the main groups of people affected by burns are children under five and around 50 per cent of burns and scalds occur in the kitchen. You The  Child Accident Prevention Trust has top tips on preventing burns.

As well as burn injuries, other dangers that Child Safety Week highlights include water safety, road safety, and how to prevent poisoning. For many of us there are higher than normal amounts of cleaning products around the house that need to be put out of reach of those little fingers. The Child Accident Prevention Trust has developed a host of helpful resources to equip families to keep children safe. There are resources for adults as well as fun activities for children to help them develop their own awareness of potential risks around the home. The Parents Pack can be downloaded for free. 

As well as taking personal responsibility for the risks posed in our homes, manufacturers and producers also have a responsibility to make products that consumers can expect to be safe. According to consumer group, Which?, faulty household appliances such as washing machines, fridge freezers and tumble dryers have accounted for more than 16,000 fires across the UK since 2012.

While more needs to be done to about unsafe products generally, registering your appliances and keeping an eye out for recalls is something that you can do to help protect yourself and your family. You can register your appliances at registermyappliance.org.uk and this should give you a good chance of the manufacturer of your product getting in touch with you if they become aware of a problem post purchase.

As Child Safety Week draws to a close, the emphasis on Child Safety must continue to be a top priority for ourselves and manufacturers going forward.