Care Courses Blog

Ensur­ing children’s safe­ty in child care envi­ron­ments is a huge respon­si­bil­i­ty. Of course, minor scrapes and bruis­es will occur as chil­dren play and explore. This is expect­ed. Even so, there are impor­tant steps you should take to pre­vent chil­dren from sus­tain­ing seri­ous injuries in your program. 

Sad­ly, the lead­ing cause of death for young chil­dren between 1 and 4 years of age is acci­dents or unin­ten­tion­al injuries. Specif­i­cal­ly, the top caus­es of acci­den­tal death for chil­dren are auto­mo­bile acci­dents, drown­ing, fire, falls, and poi­son­ing. In this blog, we will dis­cuss many com­mon indoor and out­door dan­gers and rec­om­mend pro­ce­dures you can imple­ment to keep chil­dren safe at your facility.

Indoor Child Care Safety

The first step to pro­vid­ing safe envi­ron­ments in child care, is iden­ti­fy­ing com­mon dan­gers and elim­i­nat­ing them if possible. 

A few common indoor dangers include: 

• Clean­ing products
• Sewing kits (scis­sors & needles)
• Cos­met­ic products
• Pes­ti­cides
• Knives and oth­er sharp objects
• Hot cof­fee pots and irons
• Plas­tic bags
• Med­ica­tion
• Unan­chored furniture

Some of the indoor dan­gers men­tioned above are mov­able objects that chil­dren should sim­ply not be around. Move dan­ger­ous, “off lim­its” items to a cup­board or room that only adults can access. 

Lim­it the use of chem­i­cal prod­ucts to times when the chil­dren are not present if at all pos­si­ble. If you must use chem­i­cals for clean­ing or pest removal, let the area air out before chil­dren return to the area. Fol­low your state’s guide­lines and the prod­uct manufacturer’s safe­ty data sheet for safe han­dling and stor­age of chemicals. 

Medication

Always fol­low your state’s reg­u­la­tions regard­ing the safe stor­age of med­ica­tion. Even if the med­ica­tion is for you or oth­er adults, it should be stored secure­ly and out of children’s reach! 

If chil­dren come in con­tact with chem­i­cals or med­ica­tion, an acci­den­tal poi­son­ing may occur. If you think a child may have ingest­ed or inhaled a poi­so­nous sub­stance, act fast! Call the Poi­son Con­trol Cen­ter imme­di­ate­ly at 1–800-222‑1222.

Anchor Furniture

Be sure to anchor fur­ni­ture and secure tele­vi­sion sets and oth­er objects that are placed on top. Chil­dren some­times try to climb up to reach high objects, and unan­chored fur­ni­ture can tip over onto them result­ing in crush injuries. To learn more, vis­it Anchorit.gov for resources about the impor­tance of anchor­ing fur­ni­ture. Tip-over injuries can occur even when you are watching. 

Outdoor Child Care Safety

Inspect both indoor and out­door spaces dai­ly to be sure there are no hazards. 

A few common outdoor hazards include: 

• Wild ani­mals
• Sting­ing insects
• Poi­so­nous plants
• Fall zones beneath climb­ing equipment
• Air con­di­tion­ing units
• Garbage cans
• Water haz­ards
• Parked cars
• Sun expo­sure

Before giv­ing chil­dren access to an out­door area, first look to be sure there are no wild ani­mals explor­ing the yard! Remove poi­so­nous plants, ani­mal excre­ment, and sting­ing insect nests. 

Reg­u­lar­ly inspect and main­tain out­door areas and equip­ment. It is of utmost impor­tance to make sure the fall zone beneath climb­ing equip­ment has an appro­pri­ate depth of resilient material. 

If chil­dren in your pro­gram use rid­ing toys, teach them to use hel­mets to avoid head injuries. 

Install a fence or oth­er bar­ri­er to be sure chil­dren can­not touch air con­di­tion­ing units and put lids on trash cans.  Sur­pris­ing­ly, large trash cans can be an appeal­ing place for chil­dren to hide. An open out­door trash can may col­lect rain­wa­ter, and sub­se­quent­ly cre­ate a water haz­ard for explor­ing children.

Parking Areas

Ide­al­ly, your out­door play space is sep­a­rat­ed from your park­ing area by a fence or oth­er bar­ri­er. If chil­dren are play­ing in an area near parked cars, be sure the vehi­cles are locked to pre­vent chil­dren from get­ting into them dur­ing play. It is nev­er safe for chil­dren to play in a parked car. They may dis­en­gage the park­ing brake caus­ing the vehi­cle to roll. Chil­dren may also fall asleep or hide, and remain in the vehi­cle for a long peri­od of time which can put them at risk for heat stroke. Down­load a heat­stroke fact­sheet here:

Sched­ule a time for play­ing out­doors when there is not peak sun expo­sure. More­over, dis­cuss sun safe­ty with par­ents and rou­tine­ly apply sun­block with their permission. 

What are Water Hazards? 

Water haz­ards can be found indoors and out­doors. While swim­ming pools are the most com­mon risk fac­tor asso­ci­at­ed with drown­ing, they are not the only risk fac­tor. Young chil­dren can drown in less than 2 inch­es of water or oth­er liq­uid. Con­se­quent­ly, drown­ing can hap­pen in a sink, toi­let bowl, bath­tub, foun­tain, buck­et, or small body of stand­ing water. Pay close atten­tion, and mon­i­tor children’s access to all water hazards. 

When you plan for chil­dren to engage in water play, pro­vide close super­vi­sion to keep all chil­dren safe. The Nation­al Resource Cen­ter for Health and Safe­ty in Child Care and Ear­ly Edu­ca­tion calls for a 1:1 staff/child ratio dur­ing any swim­ming, wad­ing, or water play activ­i­ties in which either an infant or a tod­dler is present. 

Touch super­vi­sion, in which a teacher is with­in an arm’s reach of a child and able to touch the child at all times, is nec­es­sary any­time young chil­dren are play­ing in or near a body of water. Sim­ply watch­ing chil­dren from near­by as they splash and play is inad­e­quate. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, a teacher who is watch­ing chil­dren play in water may not be close enough to prompt­ly res­cue a child in dis­tress. For this rea­son, touch super­vi­sion is the most effec­tive tech­nique in pre­vent­ing young chil­dren from drowning. 

Each state has its own reg­u­la­tions regard­ing fenc­ing around swim­ming pools and oth­er bod­ies of water. Always fol­low your state reg­u­la­tions. Above all, learn and fol­low the reg­u­la­tions of your indi­vid­ual state to pro­mote safe­ty in your pro­gram. Find your state’s reg­u­la­tions in the Nation­al Data­base of Child Care Licens­ing Reg­u­la­tions.

Active Supervision Promotes Child Care Safety

In addi­tion to dai­ly safe­ty check­lists and a care­ful­ly planned envi­ron­ment, you can pro­mote safe­ty in child care by imple­ment­ing active super­vi­sion. Active super­vi­sion is an approach to ensur­ing children’s safe­ty that involves adults’ focused atten­tion and delib­er­ate obser­va­tion of chil­dren through watch­ing, lis­ten­ing, count­ing, and observing. 

Active super­vi­sion not only pro­motes children’s safe­ty, but also facil­i­tates children’s learn­ing and development. 

Learn more about child care safety

Want to learn more about active super­vi­sion and oth­er ways to keep chil­dren safe in your pro­gram? Read our course, Safe Envi­ron­ments in Child Care. The course includes dai­ly safe­ty check­lists that you can use in your pro­gram. For more infor­ma­tion about keep­ing chil­dren safe in and around vehi­cles, read our blog Keep­ing Chil­dren Safe: Trans­porta­tion Safe­ty Tips for Child­care Providers. 

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