Home ›

The costs of child accidents

The NHS spends an estimated £131 million per year on emergency hospital admissions because of childhood accidents. Just a small amount of money invested in injury prevention can save many times that amount further down the line.

To help you make the case for child accident prevention in your area, we’ve put together some examples of accidental injuries, and given an indication of the cost of each of these accidents.

Head injuries

The approximate lifetime medical, educational and social costs for one child with a severe traumatic brain injury is £4.89 million.

  • Around 295,000 under-16s attend A&E with head injuries each year in England. Most head injuries are minor but 1 in 10 is moderate to severe.
  • In England during 2010/11, around 36,500 children under 14 were admitted to hospital with head injuries.
  • Traumatic brain injury accounts for 30% of childhood deaths due to external causes of injury in 1-14 year olds. Children living in deprived areas are more likely to sustain severe traumatic brain injury.
  • Falls and road-traffic accidents are the most common causes of injury, with falls most predominant in the under-2s.

Find out more

Bath water scalds

Hot bath water is the leading cause of serious scalding injuries among young children and the annual cost of treatment for 0-14 year-olds can be £39.2 million.

  • Each year in the UK around 2,000 children attend A&E following bath water scalds.
  • In England during 2010/11, around 400 children aged 0–14 were admitted to hospital with bath water scalds – 57% of all people admitted with these injuries.
  • The cost of a bed day in a specialist burns facility, to treat a minor bath water scald is £750/day.
  • The cost of a bed day in a burns centre intensive care unit is £2,500/day.
  • The cost of treating one very serious scald is between £72,246­ and £172,821.

Find out more

Read our guide on the costs of bath water scalds.

Burns

The full cost of a burn can be up to £75,983 including the cost to the NHS and the loss of parents' earnings.

  • Each year over 2,000 under-5s are admitted to hospital because of burns and scalds.
  • The vast majority of burn injuries happen to children under 5 years old.
  • Treatment for burns injuries is extremely expensive, and can run to hundreds of thousands of pounds for a severe injury.
  • A day in a specialist burns unit costs three times as much as a bed on a normal ward.
  • In 2008-2009 over 650 children under five were admitted to hospital with burns.

Find out more

Read our guide to the full cost of burns including bed costs, surgery and medication.

Hot drink scalds

The full cost of a hot drink scald can be £4,138 including the cost to the NHS and the losss of parents' earnings.

  • Hot drinks are the number one cause of scald injuries among young children.
  • In 2008-2009, almost 800 under fives were admitted to hospital in England with burns from hot drinks, food, fat and cooking oils - that’s two young children every day.
  • In the five years from 2003-2004 to 2008-2009, there was a 37% increase in the number of such hospital admissions.
  • Over 6,500 under fives visit accident and emergency departments each year because of scalds from kettles and hot drinks.

Find out more

Read more about the costs of a bed stay, medication and dressings as well as the emotional cost of such an injury.

Road accidents

The DfT estimates that the average cost per seriously injured casualty on the roads is £178,160 and that the average cost per fatality is £1,585,510.

  • In 2009, 2,671 children were killed or seriously injured on the road – that’s seven children every day. The number of children dying on the roads is decreasing year on year, but there is still some way to go.
  • In 2009, 81 under-16s were killed on the roads.

Find out more