What is SafeTea?
SafeTea is an online multimedia intervention for adults to:
- Help prevent hot drink burns in small children
- Improve burn first aid to reduce the severity of a burn or scald
Originally launched in October 2019, the campaign has been relaunched for October 2025 after new figures, released on National Burn Awareness Day 2025, showed a 16.4% increase in serious hot drink burns to children.
In 2019, SafeTea was promoted for three months, leading to around half a million people viewing and using the SafeTea website and its resources. You can read more about the success of the 2019 campaign in the SafeTea executive summary.
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. As the new figures show, the prevalence of these easily avoided but life-changing injuries are on the rise.
Our resources remain freely available, so please help us spread SafeTea!
SafeTea key messages
The primary key messages for the SafeTea campaign are around 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
Why do we need SafeTea?
Hot drinks are the leading cause of children’s burns. Burns and scalds happen in a split second, but they can be devastating for children and their families.
30 babies and toddlers go to hospital with a hot drink burn in the UK every day1, and only 1 in 4 of these children have received the correct first aid when they arrive at the A&E2.
Hot drink burns almost always occur at home, and most involve infants and toddlers as they are starting to become mobile and explore the world for themselves.
Pulling a hot cup of tea or coffee from a surface within reach is the most common way that these children are burned. It can happen incredibly quickly, taking parents completely by surprise.
The figure below shows that the peak of paediatric burn A&E attendances is in one-year-olds, when 70% of burns are caused by hot drinks or hot water (blue shading).
Who created SafeTea?
SafeTea has been designed by the Children’s Burns Research Centre, part of the UK Burns Research Network funded by the The Scar Free Foundation.
How is SafeTea being measured?
Using web analytics and short online surveys we have measured the success of the SafeTea campaign in terms of geographic reach and reactions to social posts, uptake of free download materials, and use of the SafeTea website throughout the duration of the campaign.
You can read more about the success of the 2019 campaign in the SafeTea executive summary.
Who funds SafeTea?
SafeTea has received funding from the Scar Free Foundation, Health and Care Research Wales, VTCT Foundation, Worshipful Company of Tinplate Workers, British Burn Association and Cardiff University City Region Exchange.
Who are the SafeTea team?
The need for SafeTea was identified by the prevention team within the Children’s Burns Research Centre.
Professor Alison Kemp, Professor Alan Emond, Dr Laura Crowley and research staff at Cardiff University led the design and development of the SafeTea campaign.
Research teams at Cardiff University and University of Bristol led the evaluation of SafeTea using web and social media analytics.
Professor Alan Emond, former Director of the Children’s Burns Research Centre, chairs the SafeTea steering group, which provides national expertise which informs the development and delivery of SafeTea.
Steering group members include:
- CAPT: Child Accident Prevention Trust
- RoSPA: Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents
- BBA: British Burn Association
- iHV: Institute of Health Visiting
- CBT: Children’s Burns Trust
- UWE: University of West of England
- NCPHWR: National Centre for Population Health and Wellbeing Research
- SFF: Scar Free Foundation
Marketing support from Kate Rivera at RawMarketing
2019 campaign artwork by Adam Jones at AJ Graphic Design