QA2: Nappy Checks & Changes
NQS Best Practices: Childcare 2020
In addition to meeting children’s physical needs, nappy changing and toilet training is an important time to:
- support children’s ability to develop an understanding and control of their own bodily functions
- give children your full attention and build respectful, trusting and caring relationships
- interact with children using verbal and nonverbal communication
- build children’s understanding of what is happening now and promote their ability to predict what will happen next in the routine • help children to develop and extend their self-help skills.
“Services exceeding the NQS charge an average of 7% higher fees.” It pays to implement best practices in your service.
National survey for The Early Years Insights – Sept 2019
Three best practices to consider implementing for your policy around toileting:
1. Logging an audit trail
Do you have a cloud-based (secure and encrypted) data record of nappy checks with time and date stamps as well as what information on what educator was assisting the child, and what the toileting result was?
You should.
Storing nappy charts on paper, or recording charts on a whiteboard generally means that you do not have access to historic data. This is easily solved and automated with any number of cloud-based apps that exist on the market now (like Xplor).
2. Reminders
You most likely check and change nappies within a two hour time frame (or as required). What extra steps are you taking to ensure no nappy change routine is ever missed?
You could have reminders on your clocks or devices. Or you could utilise a cloud-based app with a built-in reminder, should a nappy check or change pass you by (again, think Xplor). It’s not about potentially missing the nappy check but more about the extra steps you’re taking as a centre to ensure it never happens. It shows you’re going above and beyond for the kids, and this is noted by assessment officers.
3. Instant parent communication
Parents deserve to know about their child’s toileting. If your toileting record is a paper-based chart, or a whiteboard and parents check it when they come into the centre to pick up their child, then you’re fulfilling this requirement. But what about the parents that don’t regularly come into the centre?
In every relationship, there is always one parent who picks up and drops off the child more than the other parent. All parents have the right to this information about their child- and there should not be a requirement for the parent to come into the service in order to get this information.
Therefore, look for an app that updates parents of the toileting event as well as the time stamp. Having consistency in a child’s routine across both home and child care is important for the child’s development. Effective communication with parents is where this starts.
TO LEARN MORE about implementing best practices as well as automating the recording of data needed to give you the best chance of Exceeding QA2, reach out to Xplor.
