From Monday 1 June to Sunday 7 June is Child Safety Week. It is the Child Accident Prevention Trust’s annual community education campaign, acting as a catalyst for thousands of safety conversations and activities UK-wide. This Child Safety Week, the focus is on building capacity for safety behaviour, with the theme ‘Making prevention possible’.

The aim of the Child Accident Prevention Trust is to enable children to have the freedom to grow and learn, safe from serious harm, by helping families build confidence and skills in managing the real risks to children’s safety.

Accidental injury is one of the biggest killers of the UK’s children and a leading cause of disability for otherwise healthy children, with many of the children killed or suffering disfiguring or disabling injuries in accidents that are completely preventable.

The scale of the problem

Every year, in England alone, 55 under-fives die due to accidents in their own homes and 40,000 are admitted to hospital.

47 children died on UK roads last year and 2,380 were seriously injured in road accidents.

The personal consequences of a serious accident can be devastating, including years of painful skin grafts or permanent brain damage. They can impair a child’s mental health, education, and job prospects, and put family relationships under serious strain.

On top of these devastating human costs, there are high financial costs for our hard-pressed NHS.

The Chief Medical Officer has estimated that it costs £9 million a year to treat childhood accidents in A&E and another £87 million to treat children who stay in hospital. The cumulative costs are even higher.  In just one year, children who suffer serious bathwater scalds generate lifetime treatment costs for the NHS of £6.7 million.

Find out more regarding keeping your children safe at home around everything from hair straighteners to toys, as well general advice regarding road safety, bike safety and water safety.