Welcome to the second part of our National Quality Standards seven-part series, where we provide an in-depth look into the seven quality areas benchmarked against the Australian Children's Education and Care Quality Authority (ACECQA) standards.
National Quality Standard – Quality Area 2 Children's Health and Safety
Quality Area 2 promotes children's health, safety and wellbeing by providing environments that minimise risk and protect children from harm.
Your Educators foster the health and wellbeing of children to help them become confident and capable learners by offering programs and environments that:
- Support play-based learning that promotes healthy lifestyles through nutrition, hygiene and physical fitness.
- Nurture children's emotions and social relationships to ensure the positive development of their wellbeing and self-confidence.
- Promote the development of self-help skills to ensure each child can take on responsibility for their health and safety and the safety of others.
- Allow children to participate actively in their education, health and wellbeing.
Your educators promote the framework of Quality Area 2 by fostering each child's wellbeing and healthy lifestyle and supporting each child's growing competence, confidence and independence.
Quality Area 2 consists of two standards
As stated on the ACECQA (Australian Children's Education and Care Quality Authority) website, there are two areas of focus: children's health and safety. These Standards are crucial to delivering quality outcomes for children under the National Quality Framework because:
- Children's health, comfort and wellbeing strongly impact their learning, confidence and self-growth.
- All children have a right to safety and protection from harm.
- Adequate supervision and effective management of incidents and emergencies are paramount to support children's safety and engagement in the educational program.
Standard One - Health:
Each child's health and physical activity is supported and promoted by ensuring each child's wellbeing and comfort is provided for, including appropriate opportunities to meet each child's need for sleep, rest and relaxation. The centre maintains health practices and procedures, effective illness and injury management and hygiene practices, which are promoted and implemented.
Centres promote healthy lifestyles, healthy eating and physical activity.
Standard Two - Safety:
Each child is protected at all times; reasonable precautions and adequate supervision ensure children are protected from harm and hazards.
All centres have defined incident and emergency management, and plans to manage incidents and emergencies effectively are developed in consultation with relevant authorities, practised and implemented. Lastly, all staff are aware of their roles and responsibilities to identify and respond to every child at risk of abuse or neglect.
While the Regulatory Authority engages the service in the Assessment and Rating every few years, Affinity Education assesses against the same Australian Children's Education and Care Quality Authority (ACECQA) standards twice yearly by our carefully appointed early years experts…our Quality Team. By conducting our internal visits, we can ensure your child's service regularly engages with the framework, remains current and familiar with Education and Practice guidelines, and receives on-the-job coaching and training contextualised to the service, room and, most importantly, your children.
Please see our team to discuss if you would like further information about Quality Area 2 and how your centre ensures your child's health and safety.