TOP TIPS: Improving NQS Rating in Quality Area 2 – Child Care Central

Quality Area 2 of the National Quality Standard (NQS) emphasises on Children’s Health and Safety, which provide a critical aspect of ensuring the health and safety of children in childcare services. The aim of this quality area is to protect children from harm, injury, and infection and promote their overall wellbeing. All elements of this quality area, such as providing for the child’s health and comfort, promoting healthy practices and procedures, and ensuring their safety through adequate supervision, are crucial for creating a safe and healthy environment for children.

Here are some top tips to help improve your NQS ratings in QA2:

TIP 1 – Ensure Food Safety in Early Learning Centres

To ensure the safety for children in early childhood settings, it is crucial to guarantee healthy eating and physical activity for early childhood. Department of Health and Ageing has developed a staff and carer book called “Get Up & Grow: Healthy Eating and Physical Activity For Early Childhood”, which introduces guidelines related to food safety.

These guidelines aim to mitigate the risks of choking, allergic reactions, and food contamination. To manage food allergies, it is important to distinguish between allergies and intolerances and create individualized plans for children with severe allergies. Allergenic foods must be avoided, and close supervision is necessary to prevent exposure.

With medical recommendation, the setting may also need to eliminate allergen-free foods and restrict certain foods. Children should not exchange food to reduce the chance of exposure. When dealing with food intolerances, the goal is to minimise the child’s exposure to specific foods. To reduce choking hazards, it is recommended to avoid hard, small, round, or sticky foods and supervise children during mealtimes.

TIP 2 – Ensure Sleep, Rest, and Relaxation of Children

To ensure that children’s sleep, rest, and relaxation needs are met in early childhood settings, it’s important to keep in mind the general approach outlined by the NQS. Sleep, rest, and relaxation are not just about giving children a break from the day, but they also play a vital role in children’s health and wellbeing. In addition to this, it’s necessary to find a balance between their dynamic and diverse sleep needs, the needs of their families, and the responsibilities and capacities of the educators and service providers.

In order to determine whether your practices are responsive to each child’s sleep needs, it’s important to ask yourself key questions for reflection and consider the following: Are practices responsive to the diverse and dynamic sleep, rest, and relaxation needs of each child? By taking these factors into consideration and continuously reflecting on and reassessing your practices, you can guarantee that children’s sleep, rest, and relaxation needs are being met in a way that is compliant with the NQS and supports their overall health, learning, and well-being.

TIP 3 – Implementing Child Care Central’s Program & Practices Module: Daily Care

Improving the NQS rating in Quality Area 2, can be greatly aided by implementing effective communication and documentation practices. Child Care Central’s Daily Care feature within the Program & Practices Module can assist in this aspect by providing a simple and secure way for early childhood staff to document and share all the caring activities they do for each child on a daily basis with families. Action can be ranging from: Sleeping, Eating and Drinking, Using the Toilet, Nappy Changes, Sunscreen Application.

The feature innovative design also allows users to search for Existing Records, Print and Email Activities, Publish Activities to Parent Portal, Create Activities for Day in the Past. Everything is a simple and time-saving process. This not only helps to keep families informed and involved in their child’s care, but it also serves as a record of the actions taken to promote the health and safety of the children, which can be useful in demonstrating compliance with the NQS.

By incorporating tools like Daily Care into their daily operations, services can work towards improving their NQS rating in Quality Area 2.

To learn more about Daily Care Activities feature, click here.

To learn more about Child Care Central’s Program & Practices Module, click here.