Preparing for emergency evacuation in childcare centres
Over 1.3 million children attend childcare centres in Australia - in an emergency each one of these children need support and care to get to safety.
If you operate or work in a childcare centre in Australia, you’ll be aware of your obligations under the Work Health and Safety Regulations to ensure you can safely and effectively take part in managing an emergency.
Like all workplaces and facilities in Australia, childcare centres must prepare, maintain and implement effective and well-practised emergency procedures and evacuation plans. Childcare centres are uniquely complex when it comes to emergency planning and procedures, because naturally a large proportion of regular attendees at the facility are babies, toddlers or young children and therefore require some form of Personal Emergency Evacuation Plan (specified in Australian Standard AS3745 - Planning for Emergencies in Facilities).
We’ve worked with several childcare centres on their specific facility emergency plans. Our top tips are:
Ensure you have the correct educator to child ratios as dictated by ACECQA and that educators and staff are trained for emergencies
This is a no-brainer for childcare educators at all times, but is of particular importance when it comes to evacuations. Educators and other staff should be trained to understand emergency procedures, including their own role and responsibility in the event of an evacuation.
Making the decision to evacuate the facility must be made early.
Relocating children and infants from a childcare centre to an assembly area may take significantly longer and requires carers at either end of the evacuation chain to ensure appropriate care is maintained.
Your responsibility doesn’t stop once everyone has been evacuated to a safe location.
Here’s what you need to think about:
The Chief Warden or Early Childhood Commander must have means of accounting for everyone once they arrive at the assembly area.
Educators and Wardens (also known as the Logistics team in childcare settings) must be prepared to care for each child’s welfare. This may include providing shade/shelter, first aid, regular medications, food and water. We recommend having an evacuation ‘go bag’ stocked and available at all times.
The Chief Warden must have reliable means of communication to contact caregivers – your contact lists should be accessible digitally or available in your evacuation ‘go bag’.
The Chief Warden must consider whether the incident needs to be reported through to the regulator. If the incident required the presence of emergency services it must be reported within 24 hours.
To ensure effectiveness of this process you should practice your drills with educators and staff every quarter.
For more information or assistance in developing emergency procedures for Childcare Centres contact us today: admin@safety-101.com