The problem

Accidents happen in seconds but the consequences can last a lifetime.  A young child’s delicate skin burns far more easily than ours, leading to years of painful skin grafts, the trauma of visible scarring and disabilities caused by ‘clawed’ hands or feet.

Manchester has the highest rate of serious childhood burns in the country.  Children under three make up over half of all the children on the burns ward at the children’s hospital.  And young children from disadvantaged families are at greatest risk of serious harm.

Few of their parents are aware of the risks until their child is badly burnt.  When an accident happens, few are aware of effective first aid techniques.  Many use home remedies passed down through the family, increasing the likelihood of infection and life-long scarring.

Good first aid, administered within three hours of a burn, can make the difference between life-long scarring and a positive outcome for a young child.  For disadvantaged parents, barriers to advice include poor literacy, English as a second language and digital poverty.

Our project

Our Scar Free project is designed to reduce the devastating consequences of serious burns for babies and toddlers from disadvantaged communities across Manchester.

We are empowering parents with advice on effective burns prevention and first aid, and equipping trusted community groups with training and educational resources, targeting neighbourhoods where accident rates are highest.

Our goal is that parents of babies and toddlers from disadvantaged groups have a better understanding of effective burns prevention and first aid and are taking steps to prevent life-changing injuries to their children.

In particular, they will:

• Understand the most common causes of serious burns to young children and recognise common accident scenarios.
• Put practical burns prevention measures in place.

• Apply effective first aid techniques, to reduce the likelihood of serious scarring.

Overall, we want to see a meaningful reduction in the number of young children admitted to the specialist burns ward at Manchester Children’s Hospital with life-changing burns.

Outreach into local communities

We have developed relationships with over 160 grassroots groups and 90 frontline support services city-wide who can share our burns prevention and first aid advice with families, and distribute and display our resources.

These include: Home-Start volunteers visiting vulnerable families; baby banks, food banks; support services for homeless and asylum-seeking families; refuges for families fleeing domestic abuse; faith groups such as mosques and churches; and community hubs providing practical support to families (e.g. via welfare advice, playgroups and SEND support groups).

We’re also in touch with: health visitors; outreach workers at Sure Start centres; community libraries; and housing associations supporting young parents.

Responses from our community contacts have been overwhelmingly positive. Many groups have shared our concern for burns to young children in their own neighbourhoods, and are very keen to share our advice and resources with families.

Inclusive educational resources

We interviewed frontline workers and the parents they support to gain insights into the challenges families face, how best to engage with them and how to share our advice in the most accessible, inclusive and empowering way.

As a result, our resources are specifically designed to meet the needs of disadvantaged families and the grassroots groups who support them. They comprise:

• Picture-based handouts and posters that clearly illustrate risky scenarios and practical prevention measures, and show what good first aid looks like. Grassroots staff tell us that many of the parents they support struggle with reading, including in their mother tongue.
• A simply-written fact sheet offering essential advice, in English and translated into the two most common community languages spoken by parents of young children in Manchester, Urdu and Arabic.
• An education pack, with background facts and advice, picture prompts to stimulate discussion and a workshop plan with ideas for props and questions, enabling staff and volunteers to run interactive safety sessions with families.

Input from doctors and nurses has ensured that our resources offer accurate first aid advice and encourage families to seek hospital treatment for their children where needed.

We are now offering free printed resources with free delivery to our local partners in Manchester, so that we can reach families in greatest need.

Next steps

We have distributed over 27,500 resources city-wide in just 6 months, including 17,000 picture-based handouts and 5,500 translated advice sheets, engaged with families at community events and run educational sessions for parents of young children.

Royal Manchester Children’s Hospital plans to use our posters as pop-up banners in its main atrium and on digital screens in the emergency department waiting rooms, where they will be seen by thousands of families.

We now want to:

• Continue to forge connections with grassroots groups city-wide, targeting underserved communities wary of statutory services. These include families using food banks and baby banks, parents with drug or alcohol problems, young carers, families of children with SEND, Muslim communities, refugees and asylum seekers, families fleeing domestic abuse and homeless families living in temporary accommodation.
• Meet demand from community groups on the city borders, extending our support into deprived neighbourhoods in Trafford, Salford, Oldham, Bury, Bolton and Rochdale.
• Translate our advice sheet into three more languages to meet community needs.
• Continue to actively promote the free resources and offer reprints as initial supplies are exhausted.
• Offer train-the-trainer sessions, teaching staff and volunteers what good burns prevention and first aid involves, and giving them the confidence to question home remedies that can do more harm than good.
• Evaluate how we are making a difference to families and improving outcomes for children. We will assess the effectiveness of the educational resources and training, determining what has worked well / could be improved and sharing lessons learned.

We are already receiving positive feedback from parents with young children:

The European Burn Association also featured our project as an example of good practice at its recent annual congress in Berlin.

With grateful thanks

Thanks to our funders, vulnerable young children will be spared life-changing injury, disadvantaged parents will be empowered to do what works, and grassroots groups in deprived communities will be equipped with practical resources and know-how.

• AbbVie UK
• Anton Jurgens Charitable Trust
• Baker Family Charitable Trust
• Co-op Customer Donation Fund
• Equilibrium Community Support Scheme
• Grocer’s Charity
• Medicash Foundation
• Mills & Reeve Charitable Trust
• Rainford Trust
• Shears Foundation
• VTCT Foundation
• W O Street Foundation
• Westfield Health

We are now seeking funding for the project’s next steps. Please contact us if you can help.