Families For Life | Burns Prevention in Your Home-Young Children

A burn is an injury to the skin that happens from touching something hot.

Supervision is the only reliable way to prevent burns.

Always supervise your child:

• in the kitchen

• around hot surfaces like stoves, ovens, microwaves, heaters, irons and other appliances

• around outside hazards like barbecues, camp fires and exhaust pipes.

• Avoid leaving the kitchen unattended if you’re using pots and pans, kettles, toasters, sandwich presses, slow cookers, rice cookers and other appliances.

• Keep your child’s play areas away from your kitchen.

• Use the back burners on the stove first. Turn handles on pots and pans towards the back of the stove.

• Install a guard around the hot plates on your stove.

• Ensure appliance cords don’t hang down within reach of your child. Use appliances with short cords.​

Living and family areas

• Securely attach guards around heaters to discourage your child from standing too close.

• Securely attach a fixed fire guard around any open fires, smouldering ashes, or electric or gas heaters.

• Save ironing for when your child isn’t around. You could also put your child – or yourself – in a playpen while you iron.

• Install cool-to-touch ovens and heaters where possible.

• Keep clothes, toys, curtains and other flammable items at least 1 m away from heaters.

• Use placemats rather than tablecloths. If your child tugs on a tablecloth, it can bring hot food and drinks down on top of them.

• Set up and use treadmills away from your child. Unplug treadmills when you’re not using them. Treadmills can cause serious friction burns.​  

• Dress your child in close-fitting nightwear and dressing gowns with ‘low fire danger’ labels.

• Try to keep bedside lamps and light bulbs out of reach, or unplugged, until your child is old enough to understand that they burn.

• Don’t give hot water bottles or heat packs to babies and young children. If you use these products to warm up a bed, always remove them before your child gets in.​

• Keep electrical cords out of reach of your child.

• Turn electrical appliances off at power points if they're in low positions.

• Always supervise your child carefully around any naked flames, like open fires, gas burners, incense burners and candles.

• Lock matches, cigarette lighters and flammable liquids like methylated spirits up high and out of reach.

• Always smoke out of the house and away from children. This also reduces your child’s exposure to harmful second-hand smoke.​

• Brace or support gas heaters on patios so they can’t topple over.

• Keep a close watch on your child while your barbecue is heating up, being used or cooling down. Some barbecues can keep their heat for hours.

• Use only water to put out barbecue and camp fires, and rake ashes so they lose their heat more quickly. Embers, coals and ashes can stay hot for up to 8 hours after the fire has been buried under dirt or sand.

• Supervise your child around camp fires, and don’t let your child walk around camp sites barefoot.

• Don’t use accelerants like petrol and kerosene to light or reignite fires.​

• Keep your child away from exhaust pipes on cars and motor bikes. Exhaust pipes are easy to reach and can cause serious burns.

• Check whether seatbelt buckles have heated up when the weather is hot.

• Lock away tools like blow torches and soldering irons.

• In hot weather, check metal playground equipment, especially slides. They can get hot enough to burn your child.​