Birmingham Children’s Hospital needs your help

Birmingham Children’s Hospital (BCH) is hoping to secure funding to launch a safety programme in 2011 focusing on preventing burns to children from hair straighteners. In preparation, it is looking for examples of similar programmes around the country.

Birmingham will be basing its programme on a successful initiative run in Scotland and overseen by Leslie Nish, NHS Glasgow and Greater Clyde’s Health Improvement Officer. With its slogan ‘Straight off, straight in, straight away’, the campaign focused on the case of Kayla Murray, an 18-month-old girl who last year suffered severe burns and consequently painful skin grafts as a result of tugging on a dangling hair straightener flex. 

As well as looking for good practice in this field, BCH is planning to produce a leaflet on burns prevention which is based on a real story and is looking for a family who would be willing to be a case study. Although they are based in Birmingham, it is hoped that the resource would then be distributed across the country.  The team at Birmingham are also joining forces with the British Burns Association for a burns prevention day at Birmingham Town Hall in early February. More details when we have them.

Please contact BCH directly if you can help, or for information: Jane Powell, Health Promotion Practitioner/CAF Lead, email: jane.powell@bch.nhs.uk or telephone: 0121 333 8809.