First Aid Matters - Q2 2007 Edition 1 Volume 1

This is our first newsletter. We hope you enjoy reading it.

We welcome your feedback and your contributions. We would especially love to hear from any of you who have used anything you learned at any of our courses. Contact dawn@familyfirstaid.co.nz

It’s our pleasure too, to introduce Firsty, our mascot.

A Milestone for us – 1,000.

When Dawn started Family First Aid a little over a year ago, we believed that there was a demand for a professional quality short course, and we have been delighted with the results. To date we have trained over 1,000 people, and the year ahead is looking very busy. The passion that drives us is the hope that we may one day save even a single life, by giving ordinary people the knowledge and confidence to do the right thing when faced with an accident, whether it is to a loved one or a stranger. And as parents and grandparents ourselves, we’re especially focused on youngsters.

But, having started with just one course, A Practical Approach to Family First Aid, we encountered demand for several other courses, each with a slightly different emphasis.

We now have courses tailored for Sports Clubs, SeniorCare workers, and Schools. And we want to bring to these the same vital factors, namely …

• Affordability
• Convenience
• Accessibility
• Practicality
• Professionalism

615 Kids poisoned!!

The headline might be shocking if it referred to Sadam Hussein and some terrible tragedy in Iraq. How much more shocking is it when you discover that it applies to New Zealand? In the past 2 ½ years more than 600 kiwi youngsters have been poisoned by a common substance found in the majority of homes today – dishwashing powder.

This was highlighted by a story in the NZ Herald in June, about a boy not yet 5 who has already endured nearly 50 operations, has a tracheotomy, and needs 24-hour care. Sadly, he has many more years of surgery to look forward to yet.

One of the tips in this issue relates to Kitchen Safety. A kitchen is no place for kids to play in as there are so many opportunities for them to be hurt.
The damage caused by the extreme causticity of dishwashing powder and similar substances is so severe that the effects last a lifetime.

The good news is that the Mum in the Herald article, in conjunction with Safekids NZ, has succeeded in getting manufacturers to create safer powders with lower causticity.

What can YOU do?

• Buy carefully
• Keep kids out of the kitchen
• Learn First Aid

A Milestone for Plunket – 100 years.

We think Plunket is a great organisation doing a fantastic job, often taken for granted.

We still have the Plunket books for our 4 grown up children, and it’s fun to look back and see their progress, in weight, height and other milestones.

And it’s a delight now to watch those kids getting the benefit of Plunket with their own babies.

Family First Aid works with many different Plunket groups, and most months we are delivering our Family First Aid course at a Plunket Family centre somewhere, including (to date) Milford, Meadowbank, Pt Chev, Grey Lynn, Mt Eden, and Henderson.

While each Plunket group makes its own independent decisions, we have been delighted with the response so far from those who have used our services.

And of course even when we don’t have a course specifically for a Plunket group, many of the parents who come to our courses have come as a result of a Plunket recommendation anyway.

Happy Birthday Plunket, and many happy returns!!

A Great Product

Shelley and Mike Paddock , an Auckland couple, became very concerned at the lack of a decent stoveguard in NZ and decided to do something about it. They designed and contracted the manufacture of an item that is easy to fit to the most common stoves sold in New Zealand.

We will have their product available on our website very soon, but contact us anytime for details or if you would like to buy one.

It aims to keep pots and pans on the top of the stove out of reach of young hands.

There are two sizes and they are available in white, in shiny chrome and in satin chrome to suit most decors.

They’re affordable, and simple for any person to fit.

We’re still searching for a truly great equivalent for benchtop hobs.

Watch this space!

Kitchens are not playrooms

Keeping kids kitchen-safe

The kitchen is the heart of many homes, but it is a very dangerous room for children.

1. Avoid letting children play in the kitchen at all, so they do not see it as a place to congregate. If you have a gate instead of a closed door while you’re working in there, they can see you, and you can keep an eye on them. The inconvenience of having to step over a gate or continually open and close it might be well worth it, if it means avoiding a nasty accident.
2. Lock all poisonous substances out of reach and out of sight of your child. This means alcohol, medicines and cleaning powders and fluids. Janola might be devastating on stains and germs, but it’s just as devastating on kids.
3. Watch out for dangerous items stored in your fridge (e.g. alcohol, medicine)
4. Keep kettles and appliances (including their cords) far back on working surfaces. Kids reach for things automatically, and a toddler can grab a cord and pull a boiling kettle onto themselves in a heartbeat.
5. Store the blades of food processors and similar devices separately and out of reach
6. Store plastic bags out of reach
7. Use the back plates on a stove whenever possible, but always turn pan handles away from the front of the stove.
8. Ensure the stove is secured to the wall or floor. Young children have been known to open the oven door and climb on it, tipping the entire stove over, resulting in severe burns as well as other injuries. Modern stoves are required to be sold with a securing bracket. Appliance stores can sell you a bracket for an existing stove.

But of course even if the stove doesn’t tip, opening the oven door is a path to danger, so keep children well away.

Thought for the day.

Are we doing the right thing to let kids have play stoves, when it may just give them the idea that a stove is a safe item. A play stove never burns them, never crashes over on them, never electrocutes them. So are they getting an erroneous message?

No-one wants to be a poobah, spoiling every bit of fun. But can some forethought avoid later problems?

From Firsty’s dictionary:

Kid: a young human who gets almost as much fun out of a $300 electronic toy as they do out of finding a little green crawly caterpillar on a leaf.