18 AugDealing with Medical Conditions Policy
Children have a right to experience quality education and care in an environment that provides for their health and safety. This is supported when the service promotes each child’s wellbeing, healthy lifestyle, and encourages each child’s growing competence, confidence and independence.
There are a range of health issues that children can experience, including asthma, allergies, food intolerances and illnesses such as epilepsy, cystic fibrosis and diabetes that require specific care practices. Under National Regulation 168, approved providers must have a policy for dealing with medical conditions in children when a child who has a diagnosed health care need, allergy or relevant medical condition is enrolled at the service, additional requirements must be met to ensure that the child’s safety, health and wellbeing is protected.
Key requirements must be in place before the child commences attending the service, with several other issues requiring consideration:
- Has the child’s parent provided a medical management plan for the child?
- Has a risk minimisation plan been developed in consultation with the parents of the child?
- Will it be necessary to adjust any of the usual practices of the service to be fully inclusive of the child?
All aspects of the service’s operation and educational curriculum should be considered about the child’s inclusion at the program and to ensure that their safety, health and wellbeing is protected at all times.
Every reasonable precaution must be taken to protect children from harm and from any hazard likely to cause injury. Working in collaboration with the family/guardians, the service must develop a risk minimisation plan and communication plan if an enrolled child has a specific health care need, allergy or relevant medical condition.
Every service is different, so it is not sufficient to apply generic policies and procedures to multiple services. Services will need to contextualise their policies and procedures to their service’s operations and its unique context
Part of ELAA’s PolicyWorks catalogue also included Diabetes, Epilepsy, Asthma and Anaphylaxis and Allergic Reactions policy templates. ELAA’s PolicyWorks Catalogue templates provides easy to use templates to assist early childhood education and care services to contextualise and update policies to meet legislative, regulatory and funding requirements. They have also been reviewed by subject matter experts to ensure that our policies not only reflect National Regulations and Law but are consistent with expert advice and best practice. ELAA would like to thank Diabetes Victoria; Australasian Society of Clinical Immunology and Allergy; Allergy & Anaphylaxis Australia Inc; Asthma Australia; and The Epilepsy Foundation for their review and contribution to our PolicyWorks Catalogue.
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