Safety & Security Risk Analysis & maintaining a culture of accident prevention Every now and then we hear of an incident where a small child has met with an accident, escaped from or been left alone in a child care centre after hours. Luckily these incidents are fairly few and far between when you consider the number of children in child care every day. While the energetic and sometimes unpredictable behaviour of children makes it impossible to prevent all injuries from occurring, regularly checking the safety of the environment and equipment in your child care service will hopefully reduce the number of incidents. The NCAC recommends that child care providers conduct a safety risk analysis (ACCA Safety Checks Mar08.pdf) of their premises to determine what safety checks need to be undertaken at the centre, how often these should be conducted and by whom. According to the NCAC a safety risk analysis is a process by which child care service providers: Identify the potential safety risks that exist or may occur at the service. Analyse potential risks to determine the likelihood that they will occur. Predict the severity of the impact of these risks on the health and wellbeing of staff, children and visitors to the centre if they were to occur. Develop strategies to eliminate, minimise or control the risk. The information gained from this process can be used by child care service providers to create a safety checklist and timetable. You'll need to conduct a comprehensive audit of all the areas of risk to make sure your analysis is complete and relevant for your particular premises. Be sure to cover off the areas described below: Make sure cots meet current safety standards and are in good condition and that the mattresses fit well. Ensure there are no pillows, soft bedding, bumpers or doonas in the cots used for babies. The surfaces of your playground areas must be up to current standards and kept clear of rocks, leaves etc. Playground equipment needs to be checked for wear and tear. Wooden toys needs to be checked for splintering and you'll need to look for chipping paint, stiffness, insects, rust etc. Safety gates should be installed in all areas where children might come in to harm and should be well maintained. Window blinds and curtain cords should not have looped cords and should have hooks for fastening the cords tight and away from the reach of children. Make sure that clothing (especially dress up and costumes) is free from drawstrings around the neck. Keep up to date with product recalls. As evidenced by this article on the ABC website recently Govt hands out choking hazards to preschoolers http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/03/26/2527112.htm recalls of children's equipment happen more often than you might expect. In addition to conducting a safety audit try and maintain a culture of accident prevention in your service: Ensure children are supervised at all times, including while they sleep. Even areas that seem to have been completely child/baby proofed can potentially be the site of an accident. Encourage carers to try and be aware of what is going on in the larger group at all times, even while participating in activities with a subset of children. Make sure there is a tag system in your team so that when one carer leaves the room or has to deal with something he/she advises someone who can assume the supervision role. Ensure you have a simple set of safety guidelines for the service which are consistently and positively enforced by the carers at all times for example: sit down while eating and drinking, please walk and one at a time on the slide. Check that your staff have up to date first aid training and that they know what to do in case of an emergency. The NCAC has a wide variety of resources available to child care services which need to review and refresh their safety standards, including templates and articles. The Kidsafe website also has a range of helpful checklists and information sheets which can easily be adapted for use in the child care environment.

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