In an early education and care service environment, children come into contact with different children and adults, which can result in the contracting of infectious illnesses. Quality standards require services to put specific strategies into action to minimise the spread of infectious illnesses. Remember: while every reasonable effort is taken to minismise the spread of illness, it is not possible to prevent the spread of all illnesses or diseases in early education and care services. At some point you may need to keep your child at home due to illness.
Caring for an ill child while taking time off work or study can be challenging. As with facing negative attitudes about leave in the workplace can cause stress for families. It is important to identify and plan different care options (family members, friends) to help elevate this stress.
The most effective way to prevent serious childhood illness is Immunisation. Many childcare services require children to be fully immunised in order to enrol.
Services work to prevent the spread of illness by minimsing the transmission of infectious disease from one person to another including an exclusion for sick children and reducing the likelihood of illness spreading with specific hygiene procedures in place such as hand washing, cleaning of rooms/toys/resources and sanitizing.
Early Education and care service staff are not medical practitioners and are not able to diagnose whether or not a child has an infectious illness.
However, if an infectious disease is suspected, the service may ask the family to come and collect their child as soon as possible or not to bring the child in at all. Sometimes the service will request the family seek medical advice and get a medical certificate confirming the child is no longer infectious before they allow the child to return to the service.
Regulating how long a child should be excluded from care timeframe is the Document “Time Out” from Queensland Health (Public Health Regulation 2008) The “Time Out’ document.
