Health & Safety
Health & Safety
Dr Chan
Our resident doctor, visits our service fortnightly. Dr Chan is a family GP, who has worked with Bioscor International for more than 25 years. He visits our service fortnightly to provide a valuable health service where children, staff or family members can book a consultation with the doctor, as part of our wellbeing program that supports our EHJ community.
Child Safe Commitment Statement
Essex Heights Juniors is committed to safety, wellbeing and support of all children and young people. Children’s safety and wellbeing are paramount at our Centre which is fostered through our child safe culture, responsive relationships and engaging experiences. We aim to ensure a safe and healthy environment is provided in which children can learn and explore. As a child safe organisation, EHJ encourages all children to express their views and make suggestions, especially on matters that directly affect them.
All early childhood services are required to comply with the Child Safe Standards. These standards aim to drive continuous improvement, by raising awareness and assisting organisations to create and maintain physical and online child safe environments. As a child safe organisation, the Child Safe Standards are embedded into the policies and procedures of the service.
Management, staff and volunteers take every reasonable precaution to protect children in our care and treat all children with the utmost respect and understanding at all times. We are dedicated in promoting cultural safety for Aboriginal children, for children from culturally and/or linguistically diverse backgrounds and to providing a safe environment for children with additional needs.
Images and Videos
Essex Heights Juniors is committed to creating and maintaining a child safe environment. Child safety is embedded in our organisational leadership, governance, policies and procedures and culture. Children have the right to be protected from the misuse of photographic and video images whilst at the service. To ensure the privacy of children and families is respected, our service will only use photographs of children to support their learning and to record individual developmental progress with written authorisation from parents/guardians. Only Service issued electronic devices are used and strict controls are in place to ensure the appropriate storage and retention of images and video of children as per the National Model Code and Guidelines.
At Essex Heights Juniors, we aim to ensure the collection and use of photographs or video of children complies with privacy laws and related legislation.
Digital Technology
At Essex Heights Juniors (EHJ), children’s safety and wellbeing are paramount, thus we aim to create a culture that maintains a safe use of digital technologies and online environments with the support and collaboration from staff, families and community. As a child safe organisation, our service embeds the Victorian Child safe Standards, the National Principles for Child Safe Organisations and the National Model Code which addresses the use of electronic devices while providing education and care for children. We continuously address risks to ensure children are safe in physical and online environments. Digital technologies have become an integral part of many children’s daily lives. Therefore, our educators are able to guide children’s understanding of, and ability to interact, engage, access and use a range of digital technology in a child safe environment. Only educational software programs and apps that have appropriate content and have been examined prior to allowing their use are used in the Service. Children are always supervised using any digital technology.
We aim to create and maintain a positive digital safe culture that works in conjunction with our service philosophy, privacy and legislative requirements to ensure the safety of enrolled children, educators and families.
Risk assessments
Risk assessment and management is an essential part of the systems of control that help to prevent incidents from occurring. It is a crucial activity that helps prevent harm and protect children from hazards. At EHJ we ensure the safety, health and wellbeing of the children under our care by being proactive in managing risks to protect children from harm and hazards at all times. Risk assessments are completing for any activity that poses potential risks eg. sleep and rest, excursions, emergency evacuations, allergies, indoor and outdoor environments and experiences as well as special events. We are confident in our processes and make families, educators, and visitors all aware of their responsibilities through our policies and procedures.
Risk assessment is a requirement across the National Quality Framework, with specific considerations for risk assessments often prescribed in the National Regulations.
