Wednesday, April 22, 2009
How Sanitary is Your Child Care Facility?
Sanitation is an important issue in today’s child care facilities. Parents have a real fear of sending a healthy child to day care and picking him or her up at the end of the day with a cold or worse. Young children are at increased risk for contracting infectious diseases because they:
Surfaces at most child care facilities are riddled with germs, bacteria, and viruses; and proper sanitation is critical in a day care center environment, since so many children congregating in such close proximity can become a breeding ground for germs. Although there are guidelines and regulations, it is sometimes difficult to keep everything spic and span all the time.
One of the easiest ways to ensure proper sanitation is by frequent hand washing with anti-bacterial soap. This is absolutely essential! The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimate that every year, more than 22 million school days are lost due to the common cold; and many of those could have been avoided if children had washed their hands correctly. It is important to teach children aqbout germs and the importance of stress the importance of proper handwashing. In my child care the children are taught that they need to wash threir hands while singing the Alphabet song to ensure that they are washing and rinsing the proper amount of time.
You should be able to discuss your hand washing and infection control policies with parents and discuss other methods that you use to keep toys, utensils and play areas germ free. You should also have standard procedures in place dealing with diaper changing and disposal, food preparation and clean up, bathroom cleaning and sanitizing, and what happens when a child gets ill.
Sanitizing regularly with a solution of bleach and water is the most effective way to get rid of the organisms. But the bleach-water solution must be used properly to rid surfaces of germs.
A few more resouces:
Sanitation is an important issue in today’s child care facilities. Parents have a real fear of sending a healthy child to day care and picking him or her up at the end of the day with a cold or worse. Young children are at increased risk for contracting infectious diseases because they:
- are grouped together, are exposed to many new germs
- have immune systems that are not fully developed to fight germs
- do not have complete control of body fluids that contain germs
- have personal habits that spread germs like thumb sucking, rubbing eyes, and putting things in their mouths
Surfaces at most child care facilities are riddled with germs, bacteria, and viruses; and proper sanitation is critical in a day care center environment, since so many children congregating in such close proximity can become a breeding ground for germs. Although there are guidelines and regulations, it is sometimes difficult to keep everything spic and span all the time.
One of the easiest ways to ensure proper sanitation is by frequent hand washing with anti-bacterial soap. This is absolutely essential! The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimate that every year, more than 22 million school days are lost due to the common cold; and many of those could have been avoided if children had washed their hands correctly. It is important to teach children aqbout germs and the importance of stress the importance of proper handwashing. In my child care the children are taught that they need to wash threir hands while singing the Alphabet song to ensure that they are washing and rinsing the proper amount of time.
You should be able to discuss your hand washing and infection control policies with parents and discuss other methods that you use to keep toys, utensils and play areas germ free. You should also have standard procedures in place dealing with diaper changing and disposal, food preparation and clean up, bathroom cleaning and sanitizing, and what happens when a child gets ill.
Sanitizing regularly with a solution of bleach and water is the most effective way to get rid of the organisms. But the bleach-water solution must be used properly to rid surfaces of germs.
- Mix one tablespoon of bleach to one quart of water in a plastic spray bottle.
- The bleach-water solution should be mixed fresh everyday, otherwise it won’t kill germs.
- Spray the surfaces you want to disinfect with the fresh bleach-water mixture, let it sit for two minutes, and then dry the surfaces with clean paper towels.
- You can use bleach-water solution on tables, chairs, sinks, plastic toys, counter tops, changing tables, trash cans, and toilets.
- Remember to store the bleach-water solution in a locked area out of the reach of children.
A few more resouces:
- Some good handwashing resources at Healthy Child Care.
- Use Henry the Hand to help teach young children.
- WebMD gives 12 tips on how to prevent the spreading of cold germs.
// posted by Tammy Wachter @ 5:15 AM 
