Interview with Katrina Philips and Amber Young on Child Safety
gurgle: What are the most common injuries children are suffering in the home? Most accidents of children under 5 happen in the home.
85% of accidents to under 5s happen in the home.
Katrina: By far the most common injury to young children in the home is falls. Of course young children fall all the time when they are finding their feet. But falls down stairs, out of windows or from a height when they are being carried land 45 babies and toddlers in hospital every day. Serious falls like these can damage babies’ and toddlers’ brains as well as their bodies.
Amber: Burns are another all too common accident which land children in hospital. 6 young children a day are burned so badly they end up in hospital. Babies’ skin is 15 times thinner than adults’, which makes them just so vulnerable to burns from hair straighteners, hot drinks and hot water from the bath tap. Hot drink injuries from cups of tea and coffee are by far the most common of these. Serious burns can take months or years of painful skin grafts to heal, yet these accidents can be prevented in a few seconds.
Katrina: 11 babies and toddlers a day are admitted to hospital with suspected poisoning from medicines and cleaning products. The brightly coloured packaging or tablets can be attractive to little children.
gurgle: What are the more unusual injuries that occur which parents may not have thought about?
Amber: Burns from hair straighteners are on the rise. Hair straighteners get as hot as an iron and take up to 8 minutes to cool down. No-one would leave a hot iron lying around but we’ve seen toddlers who have trodden on hair straighteners or put them in their mouths.
Surprisingly a cup of tea or coffee is still hot enough to burn a baby or toddler 15 minutes after it’s been made. Babies can easily wriggle enough so they spill the drink so it’s important to put your baby down before you pick up your drink and never pass hot drinks over children’s heads.
Katrina: Detergent capsules also pose a poisoning risk to children, but they often come in boxes with no child resistant packaging and in many households they’re easily accessible under the kitchen sink.
Everyday painkillers are often not seen as a serious risk, but they can be just as serious as prescribed medicine. A pack of painkillers in a handbag lying on the floor is an accident waiting to happen.
Less common but always serious are the risks posed by even just a little bit of water. Babies and toddlers can drown in just 5cm of water – and they drown silently. Bath seats are not safety devices – babies can wriggle out of them so you need to stay with them and toddlers all the time in the bath.
gurgle: What are the top 3 safety precautions parents should be most aware of to protect their children?
Katrina: The precautions parents need to take and the risks change at different stages of their child’s development. It’s often when parents are taken by surprise, when their child can suddenly do something they weren’t able to do before, that accidents can happen. That’s why it’s good to stay one step ahead and get information about accidents from websites such as CAPT’s www.childsafetyweek.org.uk/parents. Some simple measures include:
• Fit safety catches on windows and safety gates on stairs and use them every time.
• Keep hot drinks, hair straighteners and other hot appliances out of reach and put the cold in the bath first and top up with hot.
• Keep medicines and cleaning things out of reach and sight ideally in a locked cupboard – that goes for the detergent capsules under the sink and the painkillers in the handbag too.
And don’t forget to fit smoke alarms on every level of the home and test them each week – they’ll give your family vital time to escape before you’re overcome by poisonous smoke.
gurgle: What immediate first aid should parents know that can be administered in the home?
Katrina: We strongly advise parents to learn first aid from organisations such as the British Red Cross www.redcross.org.uk or St Johns Ambulance www.sja.org.uk.
gurgle: How will Child Safety week support parents?
Katrina: This Child Safety Week, the Child Accident Prevention Trust is calling on parents and carers to make some time for safety by going to the website and pledging their time on the Time Pledge. They can find out how much they can do to keep their children safer with just a few minutes of time each day. www.childsafetyweek.org.uk/PLEDGE
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