Children’s Health and Safety
- Quality Area 2 reinforces children’s right to experience quality education and care in an environment that provides for health and safety. Educators support this when they promote each child’s wellbeing and healthy lifestyle together with supporting children’s confidence, competence and independence.
- In QA2 there are two standards that focus on children’s health, comfort and wellbeing impacting on their learning confidence and self-growth and the second one that all children have the right to safety and protection from harm. At Possum Place we facilitate this through supervision and effective management of incidences. All educators and staff must have a current NSW working with children check.
- Policies are in place to ensure the health, safety and wellbeing of children and families enrolled at the centre.
- Educators encourage a healthy lifestyle for children by guiding families with healthy food choices that they provide for their children. We engage regularly with the ‘Munch and Move’ program https://www.healthykids.nsw.gov.au/campaigns-programs/about-munch-move.aspx
- All children are provided with opportunities for sleep, rest and relaxation. This practice is informed by the families providing information on the daily routines of their child.
- We engage in yoga, meditation and listening to CD stories as an alternative of sleep to ensure children are still able to relax and reset for the afternoon’s activities.
- Sun safety
- Hygiene practices are embedded in the centre procedures, in particular, hand washing procedures are displayed near taps as well as nappy change procedures and correct ways to disinfect change mats.
- We use the resources, ‘staying healthy in childcare’ to inform our practices https://nhmrc.gov.au/about-us/publications/staying-healthy-preventing-infectious-diseases-early-childhood-education-and-care-services
- Through the supervision policy, completing risk assessments supports the protection of the children while they are at Possum Place.