Ironically, the day before Chelsea was running a feature inviting listeners to get in touch with stories about things that hadn’t happened to them since they were children, Chelsea suffered one of the most painful of childhood accidents – trapping her fingers in the door.

“It was a lovely day and I had the back door open when my mum turned up,” recalls Chelsea, who lives in Stockport. “I opened the front door and had a quick nosey to see what some workmen were doing down our road”.

“I didn’t want to get locked out so I had my hand stretched out to stop the door slamming shut, but with the wind rushing through the house, that’s exactly what it did, right on my finger.

“The pain was unbelievable and I could see my finger throbbing in front of my eyes. It was bruised and bloody and all of a sudden I could remember my mum saying ‘Watch your fingers - when I was a kid!.”

But despite the warnings of concerned parents, The Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (ROSPA) estimates that more than 28,000 children under the age of 15 visit A&E units in the UK every year with injuries to their fingers and thumbs caused by doors and door frames.

Manchester-based Simple Safety Solutions (a Division of Fingershield Safety (UK) LTD) has developed a range of easy to fit products which could have prevented Chelsea’s painful accident, and which are designed to be used around the home, as well as in schools and nurseries.

The ‘Happy Hand’ stops fingers being trapped on the handle side of the door by preventing it from slamming shut, whilst ‘Fingershield Child Finger Guards’ fill the gap between the door and the frame so fingers can’t get crushed on the hinge side.

Adrian Stores, Marketing Director at Simple Safety Solutions says: “It’s frightening to think that the hinge side of a door can exert pressure of up to 40 tons per square inch and small fingers don’t stand a chance with that kind of force.”

“Thousands of children suffer amputation or disfigurement every year when their fingers and thumbs get trapped in doors, yet it’s such a preventable accident with one of our inexpensive and simple devices.”

And Chelsea adds: “When we ran the feature on air, the flood gates really opened and so many people got in touch who’d felt the same agony that I’d gone through.”

“People really do need to be more aware of the damage that trapping fingers can do, especially when it’s so easy to stop this particular painful childhood memory from ever happening again.”

The range of door protection devices and other useful child safety products can be viewed on www.simplesafetysolutions.com.  The Company is so passionate about Child Safety that it recently commissioned an authoritative report into finger trapping called ‘The OUCH! Report that is available as a free download for parents or practitioners involved in child care from the website (see: the Press Centre).