2 Major Reasons Why Your Child Can Stay Healthy in Daycare
Just because it's cold and flu season doesn't mean that your preschooler will get sick at child care. Daycares devote significant amounts of time and energy to ensuring that their schools stay safe enough to keep the kids healthy. Even though no one can guarantee that your child won't get sick when her preschool pal has a bug, knowing what centers do to prevent illness and maintain a healthy environment is a must for any parent.
Accredited Centers
The National Association for the Education of Young Children (or NAEYC) is a primary early care accreditation agency. Along with providing information on and training in early education, NAEYC sets rigorous curricular, health and safety standards. All accredited programs must have and enforce policies on hand washing for students and staff. Centers must also enforce policies on sanitizing all surfaces that students touch as part of maintaining accreditation.
Accredited child care centers must clearly outline illness rules and regulations. This means that the school needs to have a sick-child policy that states when a student is too sick to stay at school, how and when the parents are notified and when the child may come back to school.
NAEYC isn't the only agency that accredits child care centers. The National Early Childhood Program Accreditation (or NECPA) also has similar guidelines for maintaining a safe and healthy environment at daycare.
State Licensing
Not all centers are accredited, but most states require child care programs to be licensed. Each state has their own individual licensing guidelines and procedures. Licensing ensures that schools and centers are run in safe ways and provide healthy environments. Doing so helps reduce the risk of illness for the children and staff. For example, the Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services requires all child care centers in the state to have sick policies that exclude children with conditions such as diarrhea, vomiting or a fever from attending school.
State licensing requirements may also include policies for excluding children from school who have specific illnesses. This means that sick kids with contagious illnesses such as chicken pox, mumps or measles aren't allowed to attend daycare.
Aside from policies, rules and regulations that schools must follow, the staff in a high-quality child care center is trained in illness prevention techniques. Teachers are the first line in defense. With knowledge and support, they learn how to explain illness transmission to young children in a way that is clear and age-appropriate. This, along with healthy practices such as hand-washing and sanitizing, helps keep illness under wraps in the child care setting. Talk to local daycare centers such as A Karrasel Child Care Centers to ensure they have these standards before allowing your child to attend.
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