The Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) launched a national grassroots program of Baby Safety Showers in late 1995 to help parents learn how to protect their children from injuries and deaths at home. Modeled on the traditional shower party, baby safety showers feature home safety tips and safety-related games and gifts.
Each year, tens of thousands of children are injured in the home. In fact, more children die of unintentional injuries than from childhood diseases. Most of these incidents are preventable -- especially if parents are alerted to hidden hazards in the home.
First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton attended the CPSC's kick-off Baby Safety Shower in Washington, D.C. "I hope families all over America will have baby safety showers (to) educate each other about what we need to do to keep all of our babies safe and healthy," she said. In her new book, It Takes a Village and Other Lessons Children Teach Us, Clinton wrote: "I was so impressed by the shower idea that I gave safety items at a White House shower I hosted for a friend who had just adopted a baby."
A baby safety shower creates a relaxed setting for parents and caregivers to learn how to protect their children. Each shower game or activity, like "Safety Bingo," revolves around the "Baby Safety Checklist." This checklist includes 12 important safety points that all parents should know.
Baby safety showers are a good way to create and promote partnerships among many different organizations. For example, CPSC developed this program with assistance from Gerber Products Company. Gerber printed thousands of CPSC's Baby Safety Shower "How-to Kits" and Baby Safety Checklists for national distribution.
To promote the program across the country, CPSC is working closely with the HHS Administration on Children, Youth and Families to reach child care and Head Start centers. In addition, CPSC is promoting the program with national safety and medical groups, as well as other local and national organizations. Using relatively few agency resources, Baby Safety Showers can help prevent deaths and injuries among our nation's children.
The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission protects the public from the
unreasonable risk of injury or death from 15,000 types of consumer products under the agency's
jurisdiction.
To report a dangerous product or a product-related injury and for information on
CPSC's fax-on-demand service, call CPSC's hotline at (800) 638-2772 or CPSC's teletypewriter
at (301) 595-7054.
Consumers can also report product hazards via electronic mail by sending a message to
info@cpsc.gov.
Comments: info@cpsc.gov
Revised: May 5, 1996
URL: http://www.cpsc.gov/cpscpub/pubs/success/shower.html