QUALITY AREA 2 –
Children’s health and safety
Children have the right to experience quality education and care in an environment that safeguards and promotes their health, safety and wellbeing.
The aim of Quality Area 2 under the National Quality Standard is to safeguard and promote children’s health and safety, minimise risks and protect children from harm, injury and infection.
All children have the right to experience quality education and care in an environment that provides for their physical and psychological wellbeing and provides support for each child’s growing competence, confidence and independence.
Professional Support
NSW Family Day Care Association provides support to the Family Day Care and In Home Care sectors in NSW and Australia-wide. Our aim is to support and promote high quality programs and environments for children by developing the skills and knowledge of Family Day Care staff and educators.
If you have any questions related to your Family Day Care or, if you are looking for suitable training or professional support, call us 02 9779 9999.
PD IN YOUR POCKET
This program has been funded through the NSW Government’s Sector Development Program.
GREAT SPACES, SAFE SPACES
Resources to help educators meet Quality Area 2 (Children’s Health and Safety) and Quality Area 3 (Physical Environment).
MUNCH & MOVE
The NSW Health Munch & Move program provides free professional development and resources to educators to promote healthy eating, active play and appropriate screen use for children birth to 5 years.
The program website www.healthykids.nsw.gov.au houses free resources such as:
- Program training: A series of self-paced eLearning modules, comprising of videos, scenarios and reflective practice questions. The training is approx. 3 hours in length but can be completed over multiple sessions at any time.
- Fundamental Movement Skills Videos: a series of videos teaching the steps in correctly performing and teaching the 13 fundamental movement skills.
- Implementation resources: including posters, music, storybooks, healthy eating learning experiences resources, active play ideas for babies and toddlers and Fundamental Movement Skills game ideas for 3-5 year old’s and many more for educator use.
- Fact sheets on healthy eating, lunchboxes, fussy eating, screen time, sleep, oral health, active play and more to share with families. Some fact sheets are available in 9 community languages and some are designed with and for Aboriginal families.
Peak Training
NSW Family Day Care Association is here to support and promote high quality programs and environments for children by developing the skills and knowledge of Family Day Care educators. You can easily enhance your professional development by booking into one of the short courses, run by our in-house Registered Training Organisation, PEAK Training.
PEAK Training is a Registered Training Organisation, offering nationally accredited and recognised training qualifications as well as professional development workshops for all service types in early education and care. We equip learners with the academic skills and knowledge required to experience the joy of working within the childcare industry.
PEAK Training is the training and education arm of NSW Family Day Care Association and is accredited by the Australian Skills Quality Authority (ASQA) and registered under the relevant legislation for RTOs under the 2015 National Standards. (RTO Number 90869)
We provide training to the entire early education and care sector.
Professionalism
Education
Advancement
Knowledge
NSW CHILD SAFE RESOURCE KIT
Is your Family Day Care service ‘Child Safe’? All of us involved in the FDC sector who spend our days ensuring children are educated and cared for in the best way possible, would naturally like to believe that our organisations are child safe. But are they? Is there more that can be done to ensure that your organisation is doing its utmost to safeguard children from harm. Harm in this context is:
- physical
- sexual
- emotional or psychological
- harm caused by racial, cultural, religious discrimination or lack of cultural sensitivity that might occur in a FDC setting.
The best way for a FDC service to ensure it is child safe is by implementing policies and practices to reduce risks and by educating educators and staff about appropriate and acceptable behaviour.
A Child Safe organisation is defined by the NSW Office of the Children’s Guardian as one that:
- develops child safe policies
- has a child safe code of conduct
- ensures effective staff recruitment and training
- understands privacy considerations
- has a plan for managing risk
- encourages children and young people to participate
- effectively deals with concerns or complaints about behaviours towards a child
- attends child safe organisations training.
This resource has been provided by the Department of Education as part of the Early Childhood Education and Care Sector Development Program.
MORE RESOURCES
General Resources
NSWFDCA has a wide offering of downloadables, useful links, advice and support for Educators and Services in Family Day Care.
These resources may sit outside of the Quality Areas or cover more than one Quality Area.
NSWFDCA Shop
One of our most popular resources is an 100 page guidebook that links all the 58 elements of the National Quality Standard to the questions, “What would I see?“, “What would I say?“, “What would I show?“. Please visit our online shop to order this and many other useful resources which are delivered via post.
