Safety locks for escapee?

[yanny]

Does anyone have any advice on how to secure my doors? Dd (11) left the house at 3am after waking up confused. Any ideas?

Oh I feel your pain. My ds2 is 6 and a half and I feel like we live in a prison. Every day it seems another need to secure something arises.

Currently we have UPVC front and back doors. We keep the front door locked and the keys on our person at all times. The back door key is kept on a hook up above the frame of the back door. We keep all our windows locked and the keys are hidden at the back of a kitchen drawer for when we need to open them (usually only when he is at school or asleep).

He has recently developed the strength to open the very stiff oak doors we have upstairs, and so we had to secure up there as he tried climbing out of the toilet window up there. I just bought simple bolts from Homebase and put them right at the top of the door. We keep them bolted at all times as a matter of habit, obviously except for when we got to bed at night. As your dd is 11 and probably taller than ds, you may have to invest in new lockable handles for the doors in the house, and if your front and back doors do not have key-lockable handles you may have to sort out some sort of secuity with a key, even if it means putting a packlock on.

Family memeber have asked us what we would do in the event of a fire as we have to keep our house so secure, but in the grand scheme of things, ds escaping is a much greater risk, and his safety is paramount. We have lots of windows in the house, and have plenty of stuff in each room with which we could break a window to get out if it ever came to that.

You can get alarms to fit to the door that go off and alarms with beams eg by his bedroom if he crosses the beam the alarm goes off. Do you have an OT or a social worker who can contact the OT attached to social services? They should be able to sort some products for you and may be free that way

Thanks for your replies. It sounds like you're on top of security at home humbugholder! This is the first time dd has done anything like this and can't explain why other than she thought I wasn't home. I took the keys out of both doors last night.

Agnesdipesto thanks for that, I've contacted our old OT, she has arranged for someone to call me. It may take a few days though as it's Child Safety Week. Oh the irony

if you have a pound shop they do alarms that can be stuck onto windows and doors they sound off if the contacts are broken, i used these for a few weeks while i got security sorted on my doors, think they come in pack of 4,

That's helpful, thank you. Will take a look next time I'm in town.