Ideas booklet - Parent Directory

Mealtimes should be a
happy time for families
to get together, enjoy
their food and catch up
with each other’s news.
Make sure you follow
simple safety rules like
never passing hot drinks
over a child’s head,
watching chip pans at all
times – and keeping all
those ‘tempting’ things
that may poison or choke
children well out of
harm’s way.
✔ contact your local fire and
rescue service and ask them to
demonstrate what happens when
hot fat catches fire. Hold a quiz
on fire safety and offer a deep fat
fryer as a prize
✔ get parents talking by showing
CAPT’s Fancy a cuppa? video
about preventing scalds from
hot drinks
✔ create a roleplay with older
children around preparing and
serving meals and hot drinks.
Get them to identify safety issues
as they go along
✔ create a ‘devil’s sweetshop’ by
sticking a mixture of colourful
sweets and tablets to a board with
numbers underneath – then get
parents to distinguish the sweets
from the tablets
• over half of all accidental house fires happen because
of cooking – that’s 27,000 fires in a year
• chip pans and hot fat pans are the most common cause of
house fires in which children are injured
• every year more than 6,500 children are rushed to A&E
departments because of scalds from kettles and hot drinks
• hot drinks can scald young children 15 minutes after they
have been made
• if your gas cooker or central heating boiler is faulty and
your kitchen isn’t properly ventilated, carbon monoxide can
build up over time
• low levels of poisonous carbon monoxide gas can cause
headaches, sleepiness and concentration problems,
resulting in long-term damage to a child’s developing brain
• babies and young toddlers have not learnt how to time their
breathing with chewing and swallowing food or drink, so are
at greatest risk of choking
• if you take tablets at mealtimes be careful that children
don’t copy you. 20 children are admitted to hospital each
day due to suspected poisoning, with common drugs like
pain-killers responsible for a quarter of all accidents
• child-resistant caps are useful but they are not child-proof
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