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Enforcing exclusion rules in early childhood settings
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A UK nanny agency recently surveyed 1000 parents and found that 86 per cent of them admitted to sending a child back to an early childhood setting before they had fully recovered from an illness.
This practice causes a world of problems and pain for early childhood professionals and other families and, despite clearly stated exclusion policies, enforcement can be complicated.
As you know, early childhood settings offer a fertile environment for the spread of germs and the number of variety of bugs circulating at any one time is mind-boggling. There's the usual run of unnamed viruses which cause lethargy and general misery through to nits, worms, diarrhoea, conjunctivitis, chicken pox, gastroenteritis, measles, mumps, tonsillitis, whooping cough, scarlet fever and hand, foot and mouth.
Staying Healthy in Child Care offers useful guidelines on exclusion periods for children who have been sick and when they should be kept home or should be sent home. The problem is parents are often unaware of these guidelines or ignore them.
The survey by the North West Nanny Agency showed that almost a third of the parents they surveyed had tried to cover up the signs of illness by dosing their child with medicine before dropping them off to 'perk them up' for drop off time.
One early childhood teacher who was one of 100 interviewed as part of the survey said that many parents bring their children in with clear signs of illness and deny there is anything wrong with them.
"We've had many children coming in with clear symptoms of conjunctivitis and their parents denying it. They'll try and wipe the eyes with a cotton bud but it comes up again five minutes later. We find many parents would rather chance leaving a sick child in nursery than not turn up to work – so we become a medical nursery."
All 100 of the early childhood educators interviewed for the survey voiced their concern about parents dropping their sick children off to care and said it puts all the children, workers and families in the service at risk.
So what can providers do to try keep their settings as healthy and infection free as possible and increase the chance that parents will keep their child at home when they are too sick to be in care?
- Ensure everyone knows the exclusion policies when they enrol and make a point of regularly reminding parents. Send emails, pin your exclusion policy somewhere visible, send a reminder every time you have a break out of a communicable disease in your service.
- Be assertive when instructing parents on their responsibilities. Politely explain that bringing sick children into care is a breach of contract and that if it happens again you may need to reconsider their suitability for a spot within your service.
- Educate and inform the parents in your service about the range of back up care options available to support parents when their child is too sick to be in group care. Many parents are unaware of emergency care programs and assume they will have to take time off work to care for a sick child, informing them otherwise often comes as a great relief.
- Make sure all the younger or less experienced staff have been trained to identify the signs and symptoms of illness in small children. While a runny nose or a weeping eye are easy to notice, it takes more effort to notice lethargy, listlessness a high temperature and/or tiredness.
- Be vigilant about maintaining contact details and emergency contact details for the parents in your service. If you can't get through to the parents/carers then do not hesitate to contact the emergency contacts specified on the family contact form. This avoids the possibility that a parent will ignore your call and plead ignorance the next time you need to contact them in a hurry!
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