Outcome 1 1. Keeping children healthy and safe is that important that all UK nations have regulated the care of children in settings. To ensure the complete safety and well-being of every child every home nation has welfare requirements that must be met. Each country has slight differences but they all have something in place to protect children who are being cared for by people other than their parents. It is essential that you have a copy of the welfare requirements that apply in the home nation that you work in. In England, since September 2008, the welfare requirements are now part of the EYFS. They also have been standardised so that all settings must comply with them. You will find the welfare requirements in the Statutory Framework section of the EYFS pack. The welfare requirements are compulsory, and it essential that you have read them as your setting has legal duty to comply with them. Safeguarding and promoting children’s welfare is a significant section within the welfare requirements. It covers many of the day-to-day activities that you will be involved in as a practitioner such as meal times or behaviour management. You definitely must spend some time going through the specific legal requirements and Statutory Guidance to ensure that your personal practice is complying. Suitable people are another very important part of the children’s welfare. This section looks at weather people are suitable to work with children. This means there are vetting procedures as well as training and fitness for work. It also covers the child-staff ratios. Suitable premises, environment and equipment need to be there to ensure that children are looked after in environments that are safe. As with the safeguarding and promoting children’s welfare section, many of the legal requirements will apply to some of your day-to-day activities, for example checking that toys are safe and that the outdoor environment is clean. You need to be organised in order to take care of the children’s learning and development as well as promote it. Documenting records is another important part of children’s welfare. You need to read the child’s documents as you are very likely to contribute to the records yourself i.e. when a child moves room. If you work with small children in a group setting. It is essential to understand the lines of reporting and responsibility. In some settings the lime of reporting may be quite simple like just going to your line manager. In larger settings however a specific person may have been put in charge of a specific area, for example a specified first aider or fire warden. You should be reporting any health and safety issues to that person. If you are responsible for a particular area, for example designated to concerns to do with child protection, you must make sure that you make all staff aware of when to come to you, especially new staff. You may also have a responsibility of training them.
Outcome 2 2. A potential area of weakness, when it comes to supervising children and keeping them safe, is when they are moving in and out of settings and going on outings. It can be very easy for the children to move out of sight or for an adult to make an assumption that another adult is with them. To ensure safety and avoid this happening there are a set of systems in place. At the start of a session a setting can become very busy with parents dropping their children off as well as with their other siblings in tow. And practitioners may be stretched keeping an eye on the children that are already there and greeting the children that are entering the setting. So a system that is in place for children arriving in a setting is a register. This will allow practitioners to keep track of the children as they arrive and check the ratio. There is no set way to do a welcome system. Some places have a set welcoming area and some places simply have somebody in charge of the welcoming. The aim is to have a system that makes