HealthInfo Waitaha Canterbury
Keeping your child safe
Te ārai i ngā wharanga tamarikitanga
Childhood injuries are common. Thankfully, most of them are minor. But every year in New Zealand, tamariki (children) are badly injured or die in accidents, some of which could have been prevented.
Quick tips to prevent injuries to tamariki include:
- never leave tamariki alone or unsupervised when near water, particularly baths, buckets, water troughs or swimming pools
- keep medicines out of sight and reach
- use fences and barriers to stop tamariki getting near cars or water
- turn pot handles towards the back of the stove so tamariki cannot grab them
- set your hot tap water temperature to between 50 and 55 degrees
- use booster seats in cars until your tamaiti (child) is 148cm tall
- check multiple times for tamariki before starting a car and while reversing
- supervise tamariki around cars
- call the New Zealand National Poisons Centre immediately on 0800 POISON (0800 764 766) if you think your tamaiti is poisoned
- make sure tamariki wear safety gear on bikes, scooters, skates and skateboards.
In the pages below, learn what you can do to help prevent your tamariki getting injured.
HealthInfo recommends the following pages
- Starship Foundation – Safekids Aotearoa
Safekids Aotearoa provides practical advice to help keep tamariki safe from serious injuries like falls, drowning and incidents on the road.
- KidsHealth:
- Button battery dangers for children
- Child car seats
- Driveway injury prevention
- How to prevent burns in children
- Medicine safety: tips for parents
- Poisoning – what to do
- Water safety
Whare Kahikā – Whare Kahikā (ancestral home) is an app giving whānau knowledge to create a safe physical home environment for tamariki.
Written by HealthInfo clinical advisers. Last reviewed January 2025.
See also:
Review key: HIPCI-102815
