17th September 2025

Your Healthcare marks World Patient Safety Day

World Patient Safety Day 2025 is dedicated to safe care for every newborn and child, with a special focus on those from birth to nine years old. This year’s theme, “Patient safety from the start!”, emphasises the urgent need to act early and consistently to prevent harm throughout childhood, and yield benefits across the life course. 

Newborns and young children face particular risks due to their rapid development, evolving health needs and different disease patterns. They rely on adults to speak up and make decisions for them. Children may also face added challenges depending on their socio-economic circumstances, such as not being able to get the care they need. A single safety incident can have lifelong consequences for a child’s health and development. 

Your Healthcare’s patient safety specialist, Jo Reynolds, commented: “Children are not small adults. They require care that is developmentally appropriate, emotionally supportive, and delivered in safe environments. Unsafe care can have lifelong consequences, especially in the early years. That’s why this year’s campaign calls on all of us to take action to prevent avoidable harm and ensure safe care from the very beginning.

“At Your Healthcare, we are proud to support this mission. Whether in clinics, schools, or homes, our teams are committed to delivering safe, high-quality care for every child.

“We will use today to reflect, recommit, and act because every child’s health journey matters.

Anne-Marie Walsh, service lead for health visiting, said: “Health visitors play a vital role in keeping children and families safe through early support, education, and safeguarding. By providing home-based support and holistic assessments, we are able to identify potential risks and intervene early, offering advice or making referrals to social care when necessary.”

Kate Arkwright, school health team service lead, commented: “The School Health Service supports the provision of high-quality relationship, sex and health education for children who attend Kingston Schools. Relationships education focuses on how to form and sustain positive, healthy relationships. This helps children to identify risks and harms so they can keep themselves and others safe.”

Carmel Brady, service lead for children’s speech and language therapy, added: “Speech and language therapy keeps children safe by giving them the skills to advocate for themselves through communication.  We help children to develop their language abilities to their maximum potential and support social communication skills to help them to successfully interact with those around them.”

Your Healthcare is committed to preventing avoidable harm and building a safer, healthier future for every child, as part of the global effort to achieve the World Health Organization’s Sustainable Development Goal 3 – to ensure healthy lives and promote wellbeing for all.