Following on from last week’s post about the trips that I took the children on here.

To keep the children safe I would carry out a risk assessment and make some preparations:-

Firstly I had a piece written into my contracts asking parents for written consent allowing me to take their children out in my car ( I always showed them my car insurance document and M.O.T. certificate during the first interview here.

I also made it clear that the school run ( for my own children) counted as an outing as I once heard about a parent who challenged her child minder about this. I also made sure that each child had the correct car seat safely fitted in my car ( often the parent would leave their car seat when they dropped off their child).

I purchased a mini first aid kit that went in my bag.

I also took along a note book with the children’s information in: For example, parents contact numbers and child’s doctor’s information, I had the parents details logged in my mobile phone, but I took the book along as a backup in case my phone battery died or there was no signal, also if a child has an accident and needs to be taken to hospital ( thankfully this never happened) the nursing staff will ask for details of the patients G.P,

I once won some children’s identity wrist bands in a competition, I wrote my mobile phone number inside the bands and told the children that if they got lost to go to a lady with children ( I thought this was the safest option) and ask her to phone me, one little boy said he didn’t want to get lost! I reassured him that I wouldn’t let that happen, I just wanted him to wear it for extra safety.

While we were out I was forever head counting the children, especially during the school holidays when I had extra school age children. I remember one time when I took 6 children to the park and a parent asked if he could collect his child earlier than usual, we agreed that he would meet us at the park which was nearer to his home, After they had left and I did a head count it took me a moment to realise that I was one child less!

Child minders and other early years practitioners should do risk assessments regularly, if you are doing one of a room indoors a good tip is to get down on the floor to see things from a child’s eye level.

Hopefully this will reassure parents that their children are safe with their child minders and will help other child minders to keep the children safe.

As always questions, comments and topic suggestions are welcome and please share this on social media if you think others would benefit from reading any of my posts.

Until next time.

Karen

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