Compliance and Quality Improvement in Health and Safety

As a professional, you must model the behaviours and procedures set out in the service policies. It is also your responsibility to monitor the safe behaviour of others, including other staff and families, and take steps to ensure that policy breaches are corrected and reported, or both. 

Accessing Policies

It is crucial that all staff, volunteers and contractors can access policies and procedures readily. Many policies that relate to children and families should also be provided or easily accessible to families. Depending on the service, health and safety policies might be found: 

• In folders in your service’s office
• On the organisation’s intranet
• In booklet form and distributed to parents/guardians and carers, particularly covering policies that relate to families
• Posters or notices on walls remind staff and others, including children, of a particular policy, such as handwashing or wearing hats outdoors.

Suppose your service maintains its policies and procedures on an intranet platform. In that case, it is helpful to have a hard copy readily available on site as well, as long as it is updated whenever changes are made to the digital version. 

Policy Breaches

Not knowing about a policy is never an acceptable excuse for breaching it. Your service must make the policy easy to read and access, but it is your responsibility to read and understand it. If you work outside of policy, your actions can lead to risks to the health and safety of others. It can also mean that your workplace can refuse to support you if claims for negligence, injury or harm are taken against you. 

Helping Families and Children Understand and Follow Policies

Human behaviour is often predictable, and it is well known that people, including children, are more likely to follow the rules when they understand why they are important. For this reason, an explanation or a reminder about a policy can often be accompanied by a reason or motivation to help them comply. Explanations should be age appropriate and should not create unnecessary fear or concern. 

Responding to Issues According to Policy

Health and safety is everyone's responsibility. For example, it is the responsibility of the centre owners to ensure that the building and outdoor structures are maintained and kept safe. Still, it is the responsibility of educators to report problems or issues that they notice in these structures. 

The section that outlines the scope of the policy provides information about who is responsible for the policy's requirements. The responsibility for ensuring that policies are followed often falls on managers, but every staff member can and should play a part in this. 

If you are unsure about the scope of your responsibilities, the policy likely needs updating to clarify this to you and others. It is far better to seek help with understanding your own role in acting on a policy before you need to respond to a real situation. 

In most cases, leaving a health and safety issue to someone else is unacceptable. If you see a hazard, deal with it immediately. If possible, remove the hazard. This could include cleaning a spill, placing a broken piece of equipment in a locked area to be fixed by maintenance workers, putting up physical barriers to keep children away from a window broken in a storm, or a tree branch that has snapped overhead in outdoor areas. 

Your second responsibility in these cases is to report and document the problem to a manager or appropriate senior person. Reporting and documentation procedures might vary between services and depend on the level of risk. It can mean verbally reporting to a manager, the centre owner, a maintenance officer or even emergency services such as the police or ambulance. Records must be up-to-date and completed promptly where they relate to an issue or an event.

Health and safety documentation maintained by a service includes:

• completed incident reports, or an illness or injury reports
• maintenance records
• safety audits reports
• written reports on health and safety findings
• staff training records
• children’s records, such as immunisation, medical conditions, allergies and treatment
• risk assessments and emergency plans. 

Accessing the Policies of your Workplace

If you are currently employed, locate the policies and procedures relating to health and safety and answer the following questions. If you are not currently employed, locate an example set of policies and procedures, such as the policies provided to you as Little.ly policy resources, or via policies of centres published online, such as Bright Futures Children Services: Policy and procedure manual.

Make sure that you keep notes for your future reference, as this information will support you in your assessment and professional practice.

Answer the following questions.

1. Where are the policies located?
2. Are the policies accessible for families, and how would they go about accessing them?
3. Do the policies contain the 11 minimum health and safety policy requirements outlined in Chapter 1?
4. Locate the National Regulation that requires these policies to be included as a minimum and write down the penalty that applies to services that do not meet this requirement.
5. How are the policies laid out? Provide examples of the headings that separate each policy section and its accompanying procedures.
6. What is the process for policy review?

Communicating new or topical policies, changes to procedures, or updates to legislation to families and other educators is a practice that should be regularly carried out, formally and informally.

Communicating Policies to Others 

Formally, staff and family meetings should be a regular forum to discuss health and safety issues, including: 

• Problems that educators or other staff might be having with understanding or complying with the policy
• Instances where policies are being breached and how this could be overcome 
• Discussing changes to the service environment, policies or procedures so that all staff are kept informed in a timely way about these changes 
• Informing staff about updates to health and safety legislation or other best practice updates 
• Providing support and guidance in a way that enables all staff to adhere to the policy. 

However, health and safety policies should also be a regular, informal discussion topic. 

For example: 

• Remind staff and families in a topical way when a policy has particular relevance, such as at the beginning of a day when extremely hot weather is forecast 
• Make use of posters at key places in the service to serve as reminders 
• Send emails and memos with details of changes to policy, legislation or service procedures to staff and families when they might be affected by the change. 

Example 

When another worker or a family member has breached (or is at risk of breaching) policy, point this out non-aggressively as soon as you notice, with a comment like, ‘You might not be aware, but we are not permitted to use that procedure. We must, by law, do it this way’. Follow this up by assisting them to approach the problem in line with policy, along with why this is important: ‘I’m happy to show you what our policy says about this. We could be fined if we don’t follow the regulations; or worse, a child could be injured’. 

Professional Development 

Educators are expected to engage in formal and informal professional development throughout the year to maintain the currency of their knowledge on health and safety. This can be arranged and undertaken by yourself or supported with in-house training by your service. 

Professional development may include: 

• Short courses, such as courses for health and safety representatives run by the health and safety authority in your area, or courses run by authorities in children’s health and safety 
• Webinars, such as those advertised by the ACECQA or Work Safe bodies in each state 
• Seminars, such as those held at industry conferences 
• Reading fact sheets and briefings from respected industry bodies
• Online training, such as health department training in Covid-safe practices

Services will ensure that the source of information is credible and accurate. Services will rely on sources such as government departments/websites and industry bodies such as ACECQA and Work Safe as authorities in health and safety in early childhood education and care services.

Reading and watching industry updates from respected sources, such as videos on the ACECQA website. Reading broadly about your industry is an excellent way to keep up-to-date with best practice and changes to legislation. Changes often come about because of new ideas and thinking that begin in academic literature, from industry conference discussions and media stories' impact. Listening to and reading news stories about children’s education and care experiences can help you understand hazards and risks differently. 

Following well-respected industry groups on social media and subscribing to e-newsletters or mail lists are excellent ways to keep informed and updated in real-time.

Professional Development

Research one professional development training session or webinar you could participate in relating to children’s health and safety. Make sure that you keep notes for your future reference, as this information will support you in your assessment and professional practice.

Website

The ACECQA website has an extensive reference list of sources that can help you stay ahead of research and developments in the children’s education and care sector.

Training

Legislation requires certain levels and frequency of training to be completed for you to remain current and for your service to maintain its accreditation. For example: 

• First aid qualifications must be renewed every three years 
• Refresher training in CPR should be undertaken every 12 months 
• Fire safety and emergency evacuation training 
• Emergency evacuation drills must be performed by staff members, volunteers and children every three months. 

Each state and territory also have their own requirements for ongoing training. Examples of these include: 

• Mandatory reporting or child protection training 
• Asthma and anaphylaxis training.

Your service must keep up-to-date records of staff who have attended compulsory training, along with records of other non-compulsory professional development. These are a crucial part of accreditation assessments. 

All staff must inform their manager if they feel inadequately trained for a specific task or if they feel you could benefit from additional training. Educators may also identify training needs for the team. Educators may seek feedback from their supervisor and colleagues about their health and safety practices. These could be raised with the supervisor during performance reviews, reflection sessions, or emergency reviews. 

Resource 

Asthma Australia (asthma.org. au) and several other respected organisations regularly scheduled training across Australia and online in asthma, allergy and anaphylaxis awareness. Completing a certificate or statement of attainment in these courses can contribute to your professional development. They can also provide an excellent boost to your resume when applying for educator jobs. 

Compulsory Staff Education and Training

Locate and list the details of the compulsory staff training schedule for educators in your service or where you attend placement.

• How often is each type of compulsory training delivered? 
• How is the attendance at this training recorded? 

Make sure that you keep notes for your future reference, as this information will support you in your assessment and professional practice.

Quality improvement must be a team effort. Try to work towards a culture of shared learning and not being defensive when improvements are suggested. The benefits of working together to improve safety, with feedback from other workers and stakeholders, are well documented. Workers are sometimes reluctant to speak up about their ideas for safety or with problems or concerns they might have. There can be many reasons for this, but workplace culture with low morale or poor communication is the most common cause for reluctance to speak up.

Example

In workplaces where open communication is not encouraged, respected or followed up, you may often hear complaints like these: 

• ‘I hate the way we get told to do it this way. But they are the bosses’.
• ‘No one listens to us anyway, so what’s the point?’ 
• ‘If I do speak up, it never gets followed up. I might as well be talking to a brick wall’. 
• ‘The owners are only in it for the money. They don’t really care about ‘safety’. 
• ‘I just nod and say yes, but in the end, I just do things the way I want to do them’. 

Changing this kind of culture can be difficult, but being open to listening and talking is the most important place to start. Here are some ideas to help change attitudes to sharing feedback: 

• Encourage an open-door policy. If a person has a complaint or problem, listen, talk and help them to work through it. 
• Follow up when you say you will. There is nothing more frustrating than reporting a serious concern and then hearing nothing more about it after reporting it. Closing the loop by letting the person know the outcome of their complaint or feedback can encourage them to keep reporting next time. 
• Seek out feedback without waiting for it. The case study below provides some examples of how to seek feedback proactively. 
• It is an offence to discourage someone from making a written report, such as an incident report or a complaint. It is known that businesses and services that treat reporting as a nuisance or a sign of the staff’s failure to do the right thing are more likely to miss great opportunities for quality and safety improvements. 
• Encourage staff to own up to mistakes in the interests of safety. Always thank the person for owning up to a mistake and help them to work through ways to prevent it from happening again. 

Example

If an educator tells you that they have accidentally given a child the incorrect dose of medication, your first response should be to ensure the child is safe. Parents should also be alerted, but the person who admitted to the mistake should be given credit for owning up to it and then provided with support, rather than punishment, in ways that will help prevent a future recurrence.

Critical Self-Reflection

Self-reflection is a crucial part of being in a professional role. Sometimes referred to as reflective practice, it is a process of checking your own work and attitudes to ensure that you are continually open to improvement. The process asks you to use deep critical thinking skills regularly, to think about how you could work more safely and effectively. Reflective practice can happen on your own, through seeking feedback from others or in groups of workers.  

Using Critical Reflection

Critical reflection is a process of reviewing, questioning and assessing beliefs and practices to make decisions that will enhance future practices. Critical reflection assists educators in identifying areas of development and provides an opportunity to build their knowledge and skills. It should be conducted regularly to explore the educators’ thoughts, feelings, and experiences. It is a valuable method for extending and refining professional practice and informing future development in all aspects of practice, including working more safely.  

Reflection involves thinking openly and analytically about key topics or questions that are the focus of the reflection. The insight educators and other staff gain during critical reflection can improve the quality of the service's practice. Meaningful information recorded during the reflection can also be shared with other stakeholders, such as families, to include them in the reflection and improvement of practice. 

Educators use critical reflection to identify the need to acquire new knowledge and make positive changes to practice. Reflection enables the team to openly discuss success and areas for improvement to work more safely.

Reflection aims to be meaningful by involving thoughtful and analytical thinking focused on improving the educator’s practice. Meaningful reflection occurs when quality information is gathered in response to key questions about what has occurred and why. 

Meaningful reflection includes:

• thoughtfully exploring different aspects of a topic, including:
  • the reasons that decisions were made
  • whether and how the service's philosophy is reflected in the decision or practice
  • what were the outcomes of the decision or practice?
• thoughtfully considering a range of perspectives on a topic, including the way that practices impact children and families 
• part of an established routine and conducted regularly to become an essential part of the culture of the service
• others being involved in facilitating the sharing of ideas, giving feedback, and debating on areas that are unclear or could be improved or developed to contribute positively to practices.

Contributing to Policy Change

All members of the workplace, and others affected by policies, such as families, should be included in updating, reviewing and altering policies. 

The first part of this process is to seek feedback on how the policy works using the methods described above. Other sources of feedback that can influence policy include looking closely at incident and illness statistics, near-miss reports, and the results of risk assessments. It can also mean watching how procedures are performed and asking for feedback on safer procedures. 

The policy committee, director, and management team must ensure that the policy meets current legislation. 

Any change to a policy must be done in cooperation with the people who are affected by it. A draft form of the policy should be put to staff or families (or both) for feedback before it is finalised. 

You can contribute to policies with ideas and feedback at any time in the review cycle. 

For example:

• Submitting a suggestion for non-urgent improvement to the policy committee so that your suggestion can be considered the next time the policy is reviewed 
• Bringing feedback or a suggested change to a staff meeting 
• Put your improvement idea into writing and provide it to managers via email, mail or a suggestion box. 

Note

Your service must give families at least 14 days’ notice before making any change to any of the eleven mandated policies or procedures if the change may significantly impact the child’s care and education or the family’s ability to use the service. These eleven mandated areas are:

• Food safety
• Sun protection
• Water safety
• First aid administration
• Incident, injury, trauma and illness
• Infectious diseases
• Medical conditions in children
• Emergency and evacuation
• Delivery and collection of children
• Excursions and transportation
• Providing a child safe environment.

Critical Reflection in Practice

Watch the following ACECQA video ‘Critical reflection in practice’.

• Discuss the video in a small group, outlining the benefits that can come from self-reflection regarding the ongoing safety of children. 
• What might you do differently as a result of ongoing critical self-reflection?

Make sure that you keep notes for your future reference, as this information will support you in your assessment and professional practice.