Child safety today

Forty thousand children go to A&E each year from playground accidents. So should we avoid them? No, says RoSPA: “Play parks should be as exciting as possible and children should be able to climb. The key reason this is important is that if children have exciting places to go to, they will avoid looking for excitement in building sites and railways.”

The 0-4 age group is the most at risk of accidents in the homes, with falls accounting for the vast majority of accidents and fire causing the most deaths.

Improvements in product design and the more widespread use of safety devices such as smoke alarms has helped cut accidents. “Smoke alarms have had a massive impact but so have other measures – child resistant medicine bottles, safety gates and fire guards are more widely used,” says project director for Child Accident Prevention Trust Mike Hayes. “New homes now have safety glass in low level windows and doors. Safety products do make a difference.”

But as Mike says, it is not enough to rely on safety products: “Not everything can be addressed by safety products and parents still need to be made aware of dangers. Parents can’t become complacent. For example, although there is good evidence that thermostatic temperature valves work to prevent scalding, children can still drown in bath water.”

Despite increased car usage, children today are much less likely to be hit or killed in a road traffic accident today than 20 years ago. Developments in medical care takes some credit, as do the introduction of lower speed limits in built-up areas, and improved design of cars, but the fact that children are far less likely to play out in the street also plays its part.

The Department of Transport advise that parents should begin to teach road safety as early as possible, and that by the age of five or six, parents can build up to letting children cross quiet roads near their home while watching from the pavement.