Safe childcare centres are essential for children’s emotional and physical health. They can also promote healthy development and support their optimal growth.
Food and small objects present a choking risk for young children, so childcare facilities must cut foods into smaller pieces. They must also keep toys and games with small parts out of reach. For a more safe childcare centre, click here.
Background Checks
The primary reason for developing a solid vetting policy is to protect children from severe and lasting harm. It’s all too common to see unfortunate headlines of children being subjected to physical, mental and sexual abuse in organizations that should be keeping them safe.
The vetting process must be extensive to ensure that childcare staff members do not have any history of criminal activity. Background checks should also cover things like drug and alcohol testing.
It’s also essential that a background check include an FBI fingerprint search to prevent people with common names or aliases from slipping through the cracks. In addition, an environmental inspection should be conducted to ensure that the facility is safe for children and staff. This includes checking for lingering paint, mould and other contaminants that could harm young children’s health.
Staff Training
A well-trained staff makes your childcare centre a safe and secure environment for children. Training your team in basic childcare workplace safety, like pediatric first aid and CPR, as well as specialized childcare health and safety topics, can help you create a highly qualified workforce ready to handle any emergency.
Training also helps keep your staff up-to-date on school policy changes. For example, during a pandemic, your staff needs to know how to document students’ illnesses and separate them from others who may be contagious. For a more safe childcare centre, click here.
Other training topics can include active listening workshops for staff members, where they learn techniques to listen without interruption and understand their student’s emotions and reactions. This allows educators to respond quickly and prevent accidents that could endanger students. Also, implementing technologies that streamline the check-in/dropoff process during the busiest times of the day, such as biometric entry scanners and real-time pickup/dropoff records, helps to reduce your staff-child ratio and ensure the safety of each child.
Emergency Preparedness
Emergency preparedness is a continuous cycle of planning, organizing, equipping, training and exercising that increases a community’s capacity to respond to hazards, incidents and emergencies. It includes preparing for natural disasters (floods, tornadoes and earthquakes) and artificial hazards such as fires, chemical spills and explosions.
Child care centre security includes making sure that the facility has working fire extinguishers and that all staff are certified in first aid. It also includes implementing procedures that help ensure children’s physical safety, such as locking doors and keeping chemicals and other dangerous items out of reach.
Emergency preparedness also includes communicating with the outside world during emergencies or disasters. That includes contacting local authorities and subscribing to a reverse 9-1-1 system. It also includes preparing a family emergency plan and an evacuation kit during a natural or artificial disaster. For example, having a plan for escaping during a hurricane or earthquake can reduce anxiety and the loss of lives and property.
Security
In addition to security measures like working fire extinguishers, childcare centres must have robust data security protocols in place to protect private customer information. This can prevent unauthorized individuals from accessing private and sensitive information at the centre. For a more safe childcare centre, click here.
Ensure physical safety by blocking entrances and exits so unauthorized people cannot enter the facility during business hours. This can also help prevent children from wandering out of the building. Some childcare centres use electronic door locks that require a code to open. Each family is given a unique code entered when they drop off their children, which can be used to verify who is entering.
Some childcare providers use a call button for guests and visitors that can only be answered by someone in the front office. This system ensures that unauthorized visitors do not get into the facility and that anyone who is not an approved parent or guardian is accompanied by staff during their visit.
