Home Safety

• RoSPA — Home Safety Advice and Resources https://www.rospa.com/home-safety

  The Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents has a comprehensive home safety section covering a wide range of everyday risks. Topics include garden safety, barbecue safety, accidental poisoning (covering medicines, cleaning products and garden chemicals), falls prevention, fire safety, DIY safety, carbon monoxide, and product safety. There is also dedicated guidance on kitchen safety for families with young children and a falls prevention hub specifically aimed at older adults — including a toolkit for social housing professionals and frontline staff. Resources are free to access and written in plain language, making them easy to share with community groups and members of the public. A useful general-purpose reference for anyone working in home safety or unintentional harm prevention.

• Responding to Hoarding Behaviours in Housing and Community Settings

Professionals working in housing and community services regularly encounter situations involving severe clutter and hoarding behaviour. These situations can create significant challenges involving risk management, tenancy sustainability, safeguarding and community safety. Yet many practitioners feel they lack a clear framework for assessing these situations and responding proportionately. This course provides a structured approach to understanding hoarding behaviour and implementing effective, ethical interventions in housing and community settings.

• [Video] Hoarding: How it impacted my life https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mNliiKE768Q

A person-centred, lived experience perspective of someone who is struggling at home

• Button battery tragedies – spread the word to prevent devastating deaths

The Child Accident Prevention Trust (CAPT) has developed free button battery safety resources for practitioners to display and share with families, including:

• • A colourful poster featuring an illustrated house, asking the question “Button batteries – where are yours?” to start conversations.
  • A two-part session plan including a pictorial flashcard and workshop outline, to support sessions with families.
  • A leaflet explaining the risks, sharing safety tips, and giving emergency advice to parents who think their child may have swallowed a button battery.
  • A factsheet translated into 17 community languages, describing the risks and where to look for button batteries at home.

The resources are free to download now from CAPT’s online button battery safety hub https://www.capt.org.uk/button-battery-safety and printed copies are free to order from CAPT’s online shop https://www.capt.org.uk/pages/shop/department/button-batteries.

• SGN carbon monoxide safety tips

It’s really important to make sure your gas appliances are checked every year by a gas safe registered engineer. This ensures everything is running safely and efficiently. If you do ever smell gas, whether that’s indoors or outdoors, call the national gas emergency service immediately on 0800 111 999.

CO is a highly poisonous gas that is produced by the incomplete burning of fossil fuels (including gas, oil, wood, petrol and coal). It can’t be seen, heard, smelt, or tasted – which is why it’s known as the ‘Silent Killer’. CO poisoning symptoms are fairly similar to flu, so make sure you know what to look out for. Symptoms include dizziness, headaches, nausea, breathlessness, collapse and loss of consciousness.

For all gas safety and carbon monoxide information, please visit: https://sgn.co.uk/help-and-advice/keeping-safe