This week is Child Safety Week 2022 (6-12 June), an annual community awareness campaign led by the Child Accident Prevention Trust (CAPT) to raise awareness of the risks of child accidents and how they can be prevented.

As part of our activities to reduce the harms caused by accidents in childhood, the iHV was delighted to support the launch of The Harper-Lee Foundation button battery awareness Parliamentary Reception on Tuesday 7 June. Alongside numerous other organisations, we signed the ‘button battery pledge’ which pledges to raise awareness of the risks associated with button and coin cell ingestion in local communities. Please join with us and sign the pledge, either as an individual or an organisation.

At the Parliamentary Reception, from the left: Georgina Mayes, Policy and Quality Lead at iHV; Katrina Phillips, Chief Executive at CAPT; Ian Evans, Training and Consultancy Manager at CAPT; and Pam Prentice, Campaigns Manager at CAPT

The Harper-Lee Foundation was established last year following the tragic death of Harper-Lee Fanthorpe who sadly passed away after ingesting a coin-cell battery. The charity is working alongside Government, charities, and industry to reduce the risk to children of accidents and death from foreign body ingestion.

The Parliamentary Reception was hosted by Jo Gideon MP and sponsored by the British and Irish Portable Battery Association (BIPBA). At the event, The Child Accident Prevention Trust (CAPT) launched a joint awareness and information campaign on button cell safety, designed to provide expert information and guidance to parents and professionals working with babies, children, and families on how to handle button batteries safely. Representatives from CAPT were on hand to discuss the initiative with parliamentarians and also share their fabulous free educational resources.

Katrina Phillips, Chief Executive of CAPT, said:

“Button batteries cause corrosive burns inside the body if they’re swallowed and get stuck. Young children have died or been left with life-changing injuries. But too few parents know about the risks or how to keep their children safe. As trusted professionals supporting families UK-wide, health visitors have a vital role to play in raising awareness.”

It is important that we all work together to raise awareness of the preventable harms that button batteries pose to children and ensure that all parents and carers are aware of the important safety messages. Button batteries are powering a growing number of household products and have been linked to serious injuries among small children. Lithium cell batteries are a particular concern as they are larger and have a higher voltage.

Here is a video from the CAPT charity about the dangers of button batteries that you can share with parents (warning – it is not an easy watch…):

The new initiative will help parents, carers and professionals understand the risks and keep children safe. There is a raft of resources available for health visitors to access, please visit: https://www.capt.org.uk/button-battery-safety for further information. Thanks to generous support from the Office for Product Safety and Standards, CAPT resources are all free to order from their online shop and they have a special fund that enables them to refund the costs of postage and packaging!

Georgina Mayes, iHV Policy and Quality Lead, said:

“I was delighted to attend this event in Parliament to raise the profile of the work of the Harper-Lee Foundation, so that communities across the United Kingdom will become more aware of the dangers of button battery ingestion. Health visitors have a vital role to play in raising awareness of the dangers that button batteries pose to babies and children. Health visitors reach every baby that is born in the UK through the delivery of the Healthy Child Programme and, through using their specialist public health nursing skills, they can prevent serious and catastrophic harm to babies and children.”

National Button Battery Awareness Day, 12 June 2022

The Westminster launch of The Harper-Lee Foundation coincided with Child Safety Week (6-12 June) and, this Sunday 12 June, marks National Button Battery Awareness Day. It would be brilliant if you could share the CAPT video and post on social media, using the hashtags #ButtonBatteryAwareness, #IamButtonBatteryAware, and #NeverAgain.

 

Today marks the start of Child Accident Prevention Trust’s (CAPT) Child Safety Week 2022 (6-12 June), and iHV is delighted to be a partner and support it!

Helping families stop serious accidents lies at the heart of Child Safety Week. This year’s theme is Safety in mind and, fortunately, there are plenty of practical things we can all do to make our homes safer for children.

Being clear what the risks are at each stage of their child’s development and knowing what simple changes to make means parents can feel confident to take charge.

With the support of the Child Accident Prevention Trust (CAPT), we have updated a suite of iHV Parent Tips around safety in the home:


These iHV Parent Tips are part of a suite of helpful factsheets to help parents to find expert advice on key areas of looking after their new baby from when they are born to when they go to school. Written by experts in the field, they cover topics such as feeding, health, behaviour and development, and are based on up-to-date research and the experience and knowledge of real-life health visitors working across the UK.

Share because you care  


Child Safety Week is an annual community education campaign run by the Child Accident Prevention Trust (CAPT), acting as a catalyst for thousands of safety conversations and activities UK-wide.

We want all children to have the freedom to grow and learn, safe from serious harm.

This year, Child Safety Week runs from Monday 7th to Sunday 13th June – with the theme Share because you care.

All free resources are listed in the ‘What resources can I get?’ section of the Child Safety Week Information Pack.

Grab resources available now!

First aid and prevention for burns webinar – 8 June, 13:00-13:45

This free webinar is a fantastic opportunity for parents you work with to:

  • understand the biggest burns risks to their child
  • learn how simple first aid can make all the difference if their child is burnt
  • make really simple changes to stop burn accidents happening in the first place.

Tickets are free, but limited, so please share this link for the Eventbrite booking page with your families and share our  on your own page.

Our highly popular iHV Insights webinar programme continues with our next event for iHV members taking place on Thursday 27 May 2021, 3:30 to 4:30pm.

Being held in the build up to Child Safety Week which takes place 7-13 June, this iHV Insights will cover the topic of: “Preventing Accidents in Children”. It will focus on the health visiting skills and role to support preventing accidents in children.

We are delighted to be joined by our expert panel of speakers, including:

  • Katrina Phillips, Chief Executive, Child Accident Trust
  • Toity Deave, iHV Fellow, Assoc Professor for Family & Child Health, Centre for Academic Child Health at University of the West of England, Bristol
  • Sue Hall-Wallace and Hayley Douglas-Jones, Clinical Leads for the Health Visiting Teams in South Warwickshire NHS Foundation Trust

The webinar will also be recorded and will be available to iHV members on our website after the event.

Please join us.

How to book for iHV members

Go to our EventBrite booking page and please use your iHV membership number as your access code. If you have any problems or enquiries please email [email protected] and we will be happy to help.

Once you have submitted your details, you will be able to select your ticket and proceed to checkout – please note that this webinar is free to iHV members.

Not an iHV member?

Previous iHV Insights

The great news is that all iHV Insights webinars are available for iHV members to access as a free member benefit after the event, as well as joining the live session. As a member you can access all of our previous iHV Insights webinars with their supported resources that includes topics on:

  • managing childhood illnesses;
  • domestic violence and abuse;
  • health visiting during a pandemic;
  • training as a health visitor during a pandemic;
  • supporting smoke-free families;
  • improving support for children with parents who are dependent on alcohol;
  • bereavement, the NBCP & Health Visiting
  • working with children with autism – resources to support your practice

Click here and login to catch up on our previous iHV Insights.

As part of Child Safety Week 2020, iHV is delighted to share its latest resource for parents: iHV Parent Tips – Accidental poisonings , written with support from the Child Accident Prevention Trust (CAPT).

The largest number of childhood accidents happen in the home. Coronavirus “lockdown” means that children will be spending much more time at home and we need to more careful to keep them safe from harm. Our homes and gardens are full of harmless-looking products that we use everyday which can be dangerous if your child accidentally puts them in their mouth or swallows them.

 

Please share.


This Parent Tip joins our suite of Parent Tips  – our helpful factsheets to help parents to find expert advice on key areas of looking after their new baby from when they are born to when they go to school. Written by experts in the field, they cover topics such as feeding, health, behaviour and development, and are based on up-to-date research and the experience and knowledge of real-life health visitors working across the UK.

Child Safety Week (1-7 June) is the Child Accident Prevention Trust’s annual campaign to equip anyone working with families with essential, practical child safety advice they can share.  It will be different this year but as important as ever.

90% of serious accidents to children under five happen in the home.  This has obvious implications for children during lockdown and as it begins to ease.

Challenging as current circumstances are, they also bring great opportunities to harness practitioners’ energy and determination to support and engage with families in need.

So CAPT are offering more free content than usual, which they’ve made really quick and easy to share – it’s crammed with practical safety advice for families during lockdown and beyond.

Child Safety Week (1-7 June) is a great opportunity to share it.  But if you can get their advice out sooner, please don’t wait as the need is now.

Lockdown help

CAPT has developed a range of new content that you can use to support families under pressure in lockdown. This includes articles, fact sheets, illustrations and social media posts.

So far, CAPT has focused on their top tips for lockdown safety plus burns and poisons – two risks that may be heightened during lockdown – with more topics to come.

CAPT has also developed a Parents Pack for practitioners to refresh their knowledge and share with families far and wide.

Child Safety Week, 1 to 7 June

Throughout Child Safety Week, CAPT will have a focus on social media, with lots of posts and tips to share, making it easy for families to get relatable, helpful advice to keep children safe.

Make sure you get them by following www.facebook.com/ChildAccidentPreventionTrust or @childsafetyweek

Beyond Child Safety Week

CAPT is reworking the Child Safety Week Action Pack as an essential year-round resource, for use once practitioners can undertake face-to-face group work again.

Sign up for your free action pack and CAPT’s free safety campaigns, advice and resources at https://www.capt.org.uk/csw-sign-up

iHV is delighted to be a partner in the Child Accident Prevention Trust’s Child Safety Week 2019.

Child Safety Week is run by Child Accident Prevention Trust (CAPT) to raise awareness of the risks of child accidents and how they can be prevented. They provide a range of resources to help practitioners run local activities and events and promote safety messages in a fun and engaging way.

This years’ Child Safety Week is next week – running from Monday 3 June to Sunday 9 June 2019.

The theme is Family life today: where’s the risk? It highlights the new dangers facing families today from our modern lifestyles and offers simple solutions to keep children safe.

The Action Pack includes top tips for engaging with families and carers, info about some of the most common causes of child accidents and how to prevent them, as well as useful event ideas and resources!

Follow hashtags #ChildSafetyWeek and #familylifetoday on social media and share your activities by tagging them too!

It’s here!  Child Safety Week starts today – and runs until 10 June 2018.

Child Safety Week is run by Child Accident Prevention Trust (CAPT) to raise awareness of the risks of child accidents and how they can be prevented. They provide a range of resources to help practitioners run local activities and events and promote safety messages in a fun and engaging way.

This year’s theme is: Safe children: together we’ve got this!

What is the theme for?

For parents it’s easy to feel overwhelmed by the demands that come with family life and keeping children safe can feel very challenging.

For practitioners the reality is that there are fewer staff and less resource than ever, so child safety can seem a challenge to effectively address.

Child Safety Week is here to help simplify the issues and highlight the quick wins and most effective ways to have an impact.

The message from the theme is that by making the most of Child Safety Week and the resources CAPT produces and by working in partnership with other local agencies, we can get child safety right.

Much of the excellent work that goes on with families is about supporting them to grow in confidence and become effective parents. Feeling empowered to keep your child safe is an important and practical step towards this.

So use the theme to profile your work with families and show them that with your advice and support they can get child safety right.

Big or small, taking part in Child Safety Week will help you and the families you support to feel confident about keeping children safe. Together we HAVE got this!

Please do share your child safety activities on social media using the hashtag #ChildSafetyWeek

Today, the BBC issues a stark warning about the dangers of button batteries. Please help to alert as many parents as possible to the dangers and stop more tragedies.

If a button battery, particularly a lithium coin battery, gets stuck in a child’s throat or gullet, the battery’s energy makes the body create caustic soda (the chemical used to unblock drains).

This can burn a hole through the throat and lead to serious internal bleeding and death.

Button batteries are found in many products that can appeal to young children, including remote controls, nightlights and novelty cards.

CAPT Child Safety Week 2016

CAPT Child Safety Week 2016

It’s a busy week next week as we have CAPT’s Child Safety Week as well as the Infant Mental Health Week!

There are plenty of resources available to support you in Child Safety Week so make sure you have everything at your fingertips!

Download your free action pack

Check out the Child Safety Week action pack for last minute ideas. It has lots of simple activity ideas, as well as printable sections with safety advice for parents.

Use free activity sheets

Use CAPT’s free activity sheets to engage parents and children, including:

  • Road safety colouring-in activity
  • Kitchen poisons activity sheet
  • Beach safety colouring-in activity
  • Burns and scalds safety cards.
  • Get socialTwitter (don’t forget to use the hashtag #childsafetyweek and if you are focusing on the theme this year of turning off technology #turnofftunein)

And much more: