SafeTea relaunched following rise in hot drink burns among children

15 October 2025

National Burns Awareness Day 2025 has relaunched The Scar Free Foundation’s 2019 SafeTea campaign, following a 16.4% increase in children being admitted to hospital with hot drink burns.

The figures from Children’s Burns Trust and the International Burn Injury Database represent the number of children between 2022 and 2024 whose injuries were so serious they required hospital admission to a Specialist Burns Service.

SafeTea originally launched in October 2019 for three months, leading to around half a million people viewing and using the SafeTea website and its resources.

The researchers working on SafeTea noted that a majority of these incidents happen at home, and when children arrive at hospital they haven’t received first aid which could have improved the injury’s healing. Because of this, SafeTea focuses on prevention and first aid:

Prevention: reduce the chance of a small child getting a burn or scald

• Keep hot drinks away from young children
• Don’t pass a hot drink over a child
• Never hold a baby and a hot drink at the same time
• Make a SafeTea zone: a safe place for hot drinks in your home, out of reach of small children

First Aid: reduce how bad a burn or scald injury is if a small child is injured

• COOL the burn for 20 minutes under cool running water
• CALL 999, 111, or your doctor
• COVER the burn with loose strips of cling film

The 2025 National Burns Awareness Day relaunch aims to bring even more awareness to the vital need for hot drink safety and the best first aid for burns and scalds, especially now we can say for certain that these easily-avoided but life-changing injuries are on the rise.

Read more about the new figures on the Children’s Burns Trust website.